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THE
MISSION OF THE CHURCH
GORE
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
THE
MISSION OF THE CHURCH
FOUR LECTURES
DELIVERED IN JUNE, 1892, IN THE CATHEDRAL
CHURCH OF ST. ASAPH
BY CHARLES GORE, M.A.
CANON OF WESTMINSTER AND HONORARY CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN
SIXTH THOUSAND
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1899
PREFACE
THIS volume contains the substance of the
lectures delivered by me in the Cathedral
Church of St. Asaph, about the festival of
St. Peter in this year, on the subject suggested
to me, viz. the Mission of the Church. The
lectures were not written, and I had, when
they were delivered, no intention of publishing
them ; but I was led to alter my determination
and have here endeavoured to reproduce them
in substance, with slight alterations and ad-
ditions, by the help of a report published in
the Church Times. The ' excitement,' alluded
to in the opening of the first lecture, was that
occasioned by the General Election then im-
2067891
vi Preface.
mediately approaching, which, in Wales at least,
had direct reference to the position of the
Church. The general argument of the lectures
will indicate what is to my mind the best method
of Church defence.
. Before going further I should wish to express
my sense of the great good which gatherings
of the Clergy, such as that in which it was my
privilege to take part at St. Asaph, are calculated
to do. It would be indeed a good thing if in
every diocese, especially every country diocese, a
benefaction similar to that which pays a lecturer
at St. Asaph, only too liberally, were to open the
way to a similar gathering. To get a great pro-
portion of the clergy of a diocese together during
four days for common prayer and eucharist, and
a course of instruction such as leads naturally
to mutual enquiry, discussion and intercourse,
seems to me a measure admirably calculated to
meet the evils which isolation and the preva-
lence of spiritual apathy tend to generate in rural
dioceses. Why should not the example be
widely followed ?
Preface. vii
I know that these lectures will be con-
demned by many as too ecclesiastical. ' By
making so much of the Church organization,'
it will be said, 'you only alienate the Non-
conformists, and promote disunion.' My answer
to this would be a plain one. If we believe —
what the primitive Church and the New Testa-
ment documents do, as it seems to me, come near
to forcing us to believe — that our Lord founded
a visible Church, and that this Church with her
creed and scriptures, ministry and sacraments, is
the instrument which He has given us to use, our
course is clear. We must devote our energies
to making the Church adequate to the divine
intention— as strong in principle, as broad in
compass, as loving in spirit, as our Lord
intended her to be ; trusting that, in proportion
as her true motherhood is realized, her children
will find their peace within her bosom. We
cannot believe that there is any religious need
which at the last resort the resources of the
Church are inadequate to meet.
Meanwhile it is of great importance that we
viii Preface.
should remember that all baptized persons,
even if they belong to separatist organizations,
are as individuals members of the body of
Christ. Surely it would be well if we Church-
men endeavoured to take every opportunity
of cultivating equal and friendly social relations
with Nonconformists. I believe Dr. Dollinger
once expressed a great hope that internal
reunion among Christians in England would
be largely promoted by the common education
of Churchmen and Nonconformists at the uni-
versities. This common education, promoting
friendliness among those who are to be clergy
of the Church or ministers of different religious
bodies, may do much good. But may not such
friendly relations be established equally well
elsewhere ? Such personal acquaintance is
much more likely to do good than the attend-
ance of Churchmen at Nonconformist gatherings
to depreciate their own Churchman ship. This
latter course of action does not appear to
minister to any other result than that of pro-
moting disunion among ourselves.
Preface. ix
Once more, these lectures will be said to
minister to sacerdotalism. There is no doubt
a widespread horror of ' sacerdotalism/ but the
way to meet it is not, I think, by vague denun-
ciation or vague glorification of an undefined
principle ; but by careful explanation of what
the Catholic principle of the apostolic succession
in the ministry means, as expounded by the best
theologians and verified in the documents of
the New Testament. Archdeacon Farrar, in a
recent denunciation of 'sacerdotalism' in the
Contemporary Review for July of this year, has
quoted some expressions of mine in repudiation
of the idea of a vicarious priesthood with
apparent approval. ' It is encouraging to find
that the head of the Pusey House recognizes
the priesthood of the English Church as minis-
terial . . . and says—" It is an abuse of the
sacerdotal conception, if it be supposed that the
priesthood exists to celebrate sacrifices or acts
of worship in the place of the body of the people
or as their substitutes."' May I assure the
archdeacon that I am not separating myself
x Preface.
from other High Churchmen or from Catholic
theologians as a whole, in maintaining the
ministerial and representative character of the
Christian priesthood ?
No doubt, however, as all the best things
are most liable to corruption, so there is a reality
corresponding to what is denounced as ecclesi-
astical exclusiveness and sacerdotal pride. It
is in view of this that the Rev. E. F. Russell,
of St. Alban's, Holborn, after speaking of the
late well-knowrn vicar of that Church as one
of those who ' to some extent at least, have
realized in their own person those revived ideals
of the priesthood, its supernatural character,
mission, and endowment, which are rilling the
hearts and firing the zeal of so many of the new
generation of our clergy' — adds the words,
' Ideals of any sort are dangerous visitants to
vain and shallow minds. In the thin soil of
a poor nature they bear ugly fruit in arrogance,
or insolent pretentiousness. It is not to be
denied that instances of this "bringing forth
of wild grapes" are not unknown amongst
Preface. xi
us. But it is far otherwise in the case of
those loftier, nobler souls, which, thank God,
are also to be found in our ranks. Upon them
the dignity of the sacerdotal character, the glory
of a divine trust for the good of human life,
weighs with the oppression of an almost unbear-
able responsibility. They find in it a ground,
not for self-exaltation or self-assertion, but
rather for the deepest self-humiliation. They
are filled with concern how they may make
good its requirements. A sense of shortcoming
haunts them. The vision of what should be
prevents all satisfaction in that which is. Hence
the feature common to the saintliest among the
clergy, everywhere and in all times, of a merci-
less self-effacement and self-sacrifice, and, by
natural consequence, an especial devotion to
the cross of Christ V
In fact, in proportion as we believe in our
priesthood, we believe that we must live and
die for men ; nay more, that we must represent
1 Alexander Heriot Mackonochie (Kegan Paul, 1890),
p. ix.
xii Preface.
men, represent what is good even in the least
enlightened aspirations of people about us.
This ideal is not one which, honestly pursued,
will minister to anything else than humility and
sympathy. For to understand men we must
learn to honour them, and this is only possible
to humility and self-effacement.
I have enunciated principles in this book
which I have endeavoured to justify at length
elsewhere. Thus the ecclesiastical principle, and
the principle of the apostolic succession asserted
in Lecture I, I have vindicated at length in
The Church and the Ministry (Longmans) : the
Anglican position as against Rome, also asserted
in Lecture I, in the Roman Catholic Claims
(Longmans, see 3rd or 4th edit.) : the orthodox
position as against destructive criticism, asserted
in Lecture III, in the Bampton Lectures of 1891
(John Murray) : the position of freedom within
the Church in regard to many points raised
by the criticism of the Old Testament, also
asserted in Lecture III, in the Essay on 'The
Holy Spirit and Inspiration/ in Lux Mundi,
Preface. xiii
and in the Preface to the roth edition (John
Murray). I must express a hope that if anyone
wishes to criticize opinions which I have ex-
pressed on these subjects in the following pages,
he will remember that they are justified at
greater length elsewhere.
C. G.
Michaelmas, 1892.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
IN view of a criticism that seemed just, I have
somewhat modified my Note 8, on the New
Testament meaning of the word ' spiritual ' :
otherwise I have made no alterations.
C G.
St. Alban's Day, 1893.
CONTENTS
LECTURE I.
JAGt
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . . i
LECTURE II.
UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND . . 39
LECTURE III.
THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO INDEPENDENT AND
HOSTILE OPINION . . . . . . -79
LECTURE IV.
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY . . 116
APPENDED NOTES.
I. THE WITNESS TO THE DOCTRINE OF A VISIBLE CHURCH IN
CLEMENT AND IGNATIUS 151
a. THE RECENT CHARGE OF ARCHDEACON SINCLAIR . . 152
3. THE NECESSITY OF SACRAMENTS NOT ABSOLUTE . . 156
4. IRENAEUS ON THE ELEMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 157
xvi Contents.
PAGE
5 THE CONTENTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TRADITION . 157
6. THE ANGLICAN DOCTRINE or THE SACRAMENTS . . 158
7. THE ANGLICAN REQUIREMENT OF THE APOSTOLIC SUC-
CESSION 159
8. THE MEANING OF THE WORD 'SPIRITUAL' . . . l6o
9. GNOSTIC ESOTERICISM AND CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALITY . l6o
10. TERTULLIAN ox THE SIMPLICITY OF CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTS 161
ii GOETHE ON THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM .... 161
12. THAT CHRISTIANS HAVE NO NEED TO ASK FOR THE
SPIRIT . ..... , « - . 163
13. INFANTS WHO ARE PROPER SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM . 163
ia. SCIENCE CANNOT PROCEED WITHOUT ASSUMPTIONS . . 165
15. EVOLUTION AND ITS RELATION TO RELIGIOUS THOUGHT . 166
16. THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE PAN-ANGLICAN CONFERENCE
ON DIVORCE 167
17. CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE AND OUR INWARD LIFE . . 169
LECTURE I.
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH.
'As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.'
St. John xx. 21.
Reverend Father in God, my brethren of
the clergy and of the laity, — If it be true, as
a general rule, "that the fault to which the
Church in agricultural districts is specially
liable is the fault of apathy and indolence,
yet it is, I suppose, profoundly improbable
that such would be at all the danger of the
Church of Christ in Wales under present
circumstances. Whatever else may be the
effect of the agitation of past years and of
the present moment round the walls of your
spiritual building, it must at least have the
2 The Mission of the Church.
effect of putting you upon your mettle. It
must substitute for any tendency to indolence
or apathy a condition of excitement, with
what is good and what is bad in excitement.
Thus we hear round about us to-day the
note of encouragement; and we hear the
note of fear, the presage of disaster: — the
note of encouragement, because of the real
progress of the Church in recent years, the
note of fear, because so much is still lacking,
the ground still to be made up is so vast,
the dangers which threaten us are so alarming.
We may have been reminded of our own
mingled atmosphere of grief and joy by the
lesson from Ezra which we read but a few
days ago describing the state of things in
Jerusalem when the builders after the captivity
had 'laid again the foundation of the temple
of the Lord l ' — ' All the people shouted with
a great shout when they praised the Lord,
because the foundation of the house of the
Lord was laid. But many of the priests and
Levites and chief of the fathers, who were
1 Ezra iii. 11-13.
The Mission of the Church. 3
ancient men, that had seen the first house,
when the foundation of this house was laid
before their eyes, wept with a loud voice ;
and many shouted aloud for joy : so that the
people could not discern the noise of the
shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of
the people/
Now, in times of excitement, if we would
be spiritually-minded, we have one supreme
and paramount obligation — it is that of re-
calling ourselves again and again, away from
the cry of the religious or political platform,
to first principles, those first principles in the
light of which our true life must be lived.
What do we mean by being Churchmen?
What is the divine mission of the Church?
What is the ground of our imperishable con-
fidence? It is — 'As my Father hath sent me,
even so send I you.'
I.
This is, in its ultimate terms, the mission
of the Church. It is the carrying out, in
its full scope, of the mission of the Christ:
B 2
4 The Mission of the Church.
' As my Father hath sent me.' God has
given us a revelation of Himself in His in-
carnate Son ; and this revelation or disclosure
of God in Christ is expressed in the three-
fold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and
king.
As prophet He not merely conveys to man
a particular message about God, but He dis-
closes God under conditions of our humanity.
He is very God, Son of God; and, being
God, He discloses in the intelligible terms
of our humanity what God is. We look to
the human mind and will and character, the
human justice and love, of Jesus of Nazareth,
and we know that we behold nothing else
than the mind and will and character, the
justice and love, of very God. Moreover what
is revealed is not merely the mind or purpose
of God towards men ; but, within certain
limits, there is a real disclosure of His inner
being, of those inner relations which bind
altogether in the indissoluble unity of God-
head, the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost. Christ is prophet, then, and discloses
The Mission of the Church. 5
God to man ; but He is also priest, to unite
or reconcile man to God. In this capacity
He first exhibits, in supreme perfection and
fulness, that unity with God of which our
nature is capable. In His own person He
represents the perfect attitude of man to
God. In His own person He offers, in our
name and on our behalf, the sacrifice of
perfect homage to the divine righteousness,
which our sins had been continuously out-
raging. All this He does first in His own
person independently of us and in our stead ;
but what He first does for us, He proceeds
to do in us. He takes us up into union
with Himself. We share His manhood, His
communion with God, His self-oblation to
the Father. Thus He is our priest. Thirdly,
He is king ; because He comes forth to
make His moral claim felt upon our man-
hood : to redeem and to liberate it, to
subdue and to govern it, in all its parts and
faculties. Thus He is prophet, priest, and
king; and, as His Father hath sent Him on
this prophetic, priestly, kingly mission, so in
6 The Mission of the Church.
His turn in the persons of His apostles He
sends out His Church. 'As my Father hath
sent me, even so send I you.'
The Church perpetuates the mission of her
Master — prophetic, priestly, kingly.
She perpetuates the prophetic mission of
Christ, because she carries down through the
ages, as its pillar and ground, the truth
which once for all was disclosed in Jesus,
the truth involved in His person, God and
man ; the truth about God, which He dis-
closed in His life, His works, His words ;
the truth about man, his destiny, his capacity,
and the sin which has marred his destiny,
and separated him from God ; and the truth
about redemption, the redemption wrought
out by God in Christ. This truth involved
in the person of our redeemer, Jesus, it is
the prophetic office of the Church perpetually
to bear witness to, to place continuously
before the eyes of men, to inculcate again
and again in its varied adaptation to the
different needs of different ages. Again, the
Church goes forth to perpetuate the priestly
The Mission of the Church. 7
mission of Christ. For the work of Christ
is not perpetuated merely in words ; there is
more to be done than teaching. ' The king-
dom of God is not in word but in power.'
There is the gift of grace, the gift of the
Spirit, and manifold gifts from the Spirit in view
of man's manifold needs ; and the Church
is the home in which this rich treasure is
dispensed, the household of God in which
is distributed the bread of life, a portion to
each in due season. It is by the ministration
of these manifold gifts of grace that our
humanity is raised again into its true relation
to God, and brought back into union with
Him. And the Church shares also Christ's
kingly function. The pastoral office is at
least as much an office of ruling as of
feeding. The Church is to discipline, to guide,
to strengthen, the manifold characters, wills
and minds of men, till this human life of
ours is brought, in all its parts and capacities,
into the obedience of Christ. Thus the
Church perpetuates the threefold mission of
the Christ. 'As my Father hath sent me
8 The Mission of the Church.
prophetic, priestly, kingly, so send I you, pro-
phetic, priestly, kingly.'
II.
Now the point which, at this stage, I wish
to emphasize is that Christ has thus enshrined
in a visible body, a visible Church, those
gifts of truth and grace with which He has
enriched mankind.
Another method might have been adopted.
It is conceivable that our Lord might have
proclaimed a certain body of truth, and then
left it to make its own way, to advance by its
own weight among mankind. He might have
scattered truth at random, like ' bread upon the
waters/ over the area of human need. But
in fact He did something different, He en-
shrined the truth deliberately in an organized
society ; and it is, we believe, in accordance
with the mind of Christ that the Church has
in fact gone out into the world as a society
based upon a distinctive creed, a creed gradu-
ally enshrined in formulas and appealing to a
The Mission of the Church. 9
fixed canon of sacred scriptures, representing
the original teaching of Christ's Apostles.
Once more, the gifts of grace are made
part of a visible system through the ministry of
sacraments. What are sacraments? They are
outward, visible and also social, ceremonies
intended for the conveyance of spiritual gifts.
There is the gift of regeneration, the gift of
the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the gift of
the bread of life, the flesh and blood of Christ.
Now these are spiritual gifts, and we can
conceive of their having been given through
purely invisible channels ; in fact, they are given
by channels which, as I say, are not only
visible, but also social. Baptism, through which
is conveyed the Spirit's gift of regeneration or in-
corporation into Christ, is an outward ceremony,
and an outward ceremony which, at the same
time, is social. It is a ceremony of admission
into a visible society. Confirmation, by which
is bestowed the indwelling of the Holy Ghost,
is an act of benediction, the laying on of the
hands of the chief ruler of a society upon one
of its members. The Eucharist again, in which
TO The Mission of the Church.
is given and taken the body and blood of
Christ, is an outward ceremony, and a cere-
mony which, in its material basis, involves
a fraternal meal. Each of the sacraments is
not only a visible but also a social institu-
tion ; such as involves that men are to be
admitted into, and kept in relation to, a visible
society.
Once again this society is not only to be a
visible reality at any particular moment. It
is also to be continuous down the ages. It is
in view of this need that the meaning of the
apostolic succession of the ministry becomes
apparent. For the Church is a catholic society,
that is, a society belonging to all nations and
ages. As a catholic society it lacks the bonds
of the life of a city or a nation — local contiguity,
common language, common customs. We can-
not, then, very well conceive how its corporate
continuity could have been maintained otherwise
than through some succession of persons such
as, bearing the apostolic commission for min-
istry, should be in each generation the neces-
sary centres of the Church's life. Granted this
The Mission of the Church. 1 1
apostolic succession, there is guaranteed in the
Church as a whole, and in each local church,
a perpetual stewardship of the grace and truth
which came by Jesus Christ, a perpetual
stewardship which, at the same time, acts as
the link of continuity, binding the churches of
all ages and of all nations into visible unity
with the apostolic college.
Thus by her creeds and her canon of scrip-
tures, by her sacraments and her apostolic
succession, the Church is rendered necessarily
a visible body. It is spiritual in its aim. It
exists for no other purpose than to minister to
the spiritual union of man with God. It is
spiritual in its aim and essence, but it is visible
in fact on earth. The invisible gift is conveyed
through visible channels : the invisible essence
is enshrined in a visible body.
Of this doctrine of the visible Church we may
say that it is first natural and second historical.
Its intimate correspondence with the principle
of the Incarnation we shall have the opportunity
of noticing in the next lecture.
First it is natural: it corresponds to a law
12 The Mission of the Church.
of our nature. Aristotle said long ago that man
is a ' social animal.' The meaning of this is that
though society is made up of individuals,
and indeed the aim of society is the develop-
ment of the faculties of the individual, yet man
realizes his individuality only by relations to
a society. It is the society that makes him
man, it is the social life of the nation or the
city that enables the individual to become truly
human.
The moral philosophy of the last, and of the
early part of the present century was charac-
terized by individualistic theories, according to
which men were regarded as primarily indi-
viduals and only secondarily as members of
society. But it is noticeable that modern ethical
writers, even of a non-theistic school, such as
Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Alexander, exhibit a
return to the Aristotelian principle. ' We must
take society and the individual as we find
them in fact,' says Mr. Alexander, ' the latter with
ties that bind him to others, the former as
something which we have never known to be
formed by the mere coalescence of separate
The Mission of the Church. 13
and independent individuals1.' It is, then, in
correspondence with a fundamental law of
man's social nature that the religion of the Son
of Man should not deal with us first as isolated
individuals ; that it should present itself as a
society incorporating individuals and developing
the individual life by first absorbing it. It is
because man is social that ' the perfect man ' 2 is
to be realized, not by the single Christian, but
by the whole Church.
Secondly, this theory of the Church is his-
torical— the title-deeds of Christianity establish
it. Historical proof is a long matter. It can-
not be given fully in a single lecture, but I
may refer to one or two chief elements in it.
i. The method of Christ. We can conceive,
as I have said, easily enough how our Lord
might have cast the truth which He came to teach
mankind broadcast over society, and left it to
make its own way. But the more you examine
the gospels, the more you will note that His
1 Alexander, Moral Order and Progress (Trubner, 1889),
p. 96.
2 Eph. iv. 13 [R.V.].
14 The Mission of the Church.
method was not in fact this, but the opposite.
More and more He concentrates all His efforts
upon that little band beside Him, whom by
steady discipline He was preparing to be the
nucleus of His new and distinctive society.
On this vigil of St. Peter's Day, we naturally
notice this more particularly : He turned away
from our human nature as He found it, un-
satisfactory and inadequate, when He wished
to lay His new foundation. ' He did not
commit himself to men ... for He knew what was
in man.' Those faults in our human nature,
which in every generation have turned phil-
anthropists into cynics, and driven the wisest
wellnigh mad — that unsatisfactoriness of our
fallen manhood — Jesus knew from the first.
Therefore He waited, He laboured, He prayed
in our true manhood till He had prepared
the soil which should be adequate for the
seed He meant to sow in it; till He had found
a foundation, not like the shifting sand of
ordinary fallen manhood, but strong and rock-
like, on which He could build; and this
rock-like character our human nature was to
The Mission of the Church. 15
gain only through faith in Himself complete
and entire. Thus, when He had gained from
the lips of St. Peter an adequate confession of
His name, a confession different altogether
from the vague and shifting ideas about
Himself which were current among the people
generally, then it was that He could make
a beginning with His new spiritual structure.
He turned to Peter, the representative of the
new confession, and said, ' Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-Jonah; for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that
thou art Peter — Rockman — and upon this rock
I will build my church, and the gates of
death shall not prevail against it V We know
the subsequent history. The faith of Peter
was shared by the apostolic college, and the
promise to Peter was, as the Christian fathers
perceived, fulfilled to the whole apostolic com-
pany in their common commission : ' As my
1 St. Matt. xvi. 17, 18. Cf. Holland's Creed and
Character, Serm. III. 'The Rock of the Church ' (Long-
mans).
1 6 The Mission of the Church.
Father hath sent me, even so send I you.' And
the meaning of this whole history is, that Jesus
did, with all deliberation, establish a distinct
society to represent the kingdom of God on
earth, a society distinct from humanity at large,
based upon the explicit confession of His name.
Consider further the method of Christ, the
institution of social sacraments, baptism and
the eucharist, and you will find that it becomes
to your mind a more and more luminous truth,
that our Lord was constituting, to last till He
should ' come again/ one visible fraternity, the
company of His ' elect ' in which to enshrine
the spiritual life which was to have its source
in Himself.
2. Now let us read, from this point of view,
the apostolic writings ; and we shall notice
with what clearness the religion of Jesus Christ
appears in history as a visible society, and
nothing else than a visible society. Its story
is told simply enough in the Acts of the
Apostles. In that book being a Christian
means nothing else than membership in the
visible body, the Church. The Church ad-
The Mission of the Church, 17
vances from place to place, but the local bodies,
' the churches,' are the expansions of ' the
Church ' l — based upon the ' apostles' doctrine,'
continuing in the 'apostles' fellowship/ and
governed by the common apostolic authority2.
The same truth is apparent in St. Paul's epistles
— not only in the Epistle to the Ephesians, or
in the Pastoral Epistles in which he is specially
making provision for the Church's future in
view of his own death, but also in an epistle
of an earlier period. Observe in the First
Epistle to Corinth, where St. Paul is dealing
with the lamentable case of incest in the
young church there, how instinctively clear
to his mind is the distinction between 'those
within * and ' those without V Christianity is
not a set of opinions which people may hold,
as in fact people in India to-day do hold, more
or less, the truth about Christ over a wide area
of Hindoo society. To be a Christian means
to be within that apostolic society, which was
made up of good and evil mingled together, as
1 Acts ix. 31 ; xi. 26 ; xiii. i ; xv. 41 ; xvi. 5.
* Acts xv. 28. * i Cor. v. 9-13.
1 8 The Mission of the Church.
this incestuous man, and those aiding and
abetting him, were as tares among the wheat,
in the young community at Corinth.
3. Let us pass to the sub-apostolic Church.
We should all of us make ourselves familiar with
those very short writings, the Epistle of Clement
and the Epistles of Ignatius. The Epistle
of Clement was written about the same time as
St. John's Gospel, in the West, at Rome. It
comes, then, from under the immediate shadow
of apostolic influence and teaching ; yet notice
how unquestionably this doctrine of the visible
Church is its characteristic mark. There is no
conception of Christianity there discoverable,
except this conception of an actual society, with
its divinely established order and its officers
commissioned by apostolic authority l.
You turn from the West, from Clement,
from the influence of St. Peter and St. Paul,
to Ignatius, in the East, to the sphere of the
influence of St. John, and still you find the
same thing. Read the letters of Ignatius the
martyr, written about A. D. no, on his way to
1 See appended note i.
The Mission of the Church. 19
death. He is hard pressed to deliver his
message to the churches before he is taken
away. And the central interest of his message
is twofold. It lies first in the paramount ne-
cessity which he discovers in the truth of
the Incarnation, that Christ, the very Son of
God, did really take our human nature ; and
secondly in his insistence upon the truth that
God's message to man is enshrined in those
visible societies which have for their ministers
bishops, priests, and deacons, ' without which
three orders no Church has a title to the
name V
4. As we move down the record of history
we find the Church in different parts of the
world assuming different characteristics. In the
West, where the Roman genius prevails, the
special characteristic is that of order and disci-
pline. In Alexandria Christianity is regarded
primarily as the truth, which is to attract, to
satisfy, to educate, the intellect and life of man.
But this variety in the local characteristics of
churches only throws into higher relief the
1 Ign. ad Trail. 3, Lightfoot's trans.
C 2
20 Jhe Mission of the Church.
common underlying creed and conception of the
visible Church. In regard to the Church, its
sacraments, its ministry, there is no hesitation.
The idea of a number of individuals combining
to form a church of their own with an organiza-
tion developed out of themselves is one which,
if heard of at all, as among the Montanists, is
heard of only to be repudiated. Of the common
doctrine of the Church I will quote only one
specimen, and it shall be from Tertullian — a
passage in which he declares that, whatever
doctrine may be matter of dispute, this at least
cannot be. ' Christ Jesus, our Lord, ' he says \
'so long as He was living on earth, spoke
Himself either openly to the people, or apart to
His disciples. From amongst these He had
attached to His person twelve especially, who
were destined to be the teachers of the nations.
Accordingly, when one of these had fallen away,
the remaining eleven received His command, as
He was departing to the Father, after His
resurrection, to go and teach the nations, who
were to be baptized into the Father and the
1 Terlull. de praescr. 20.
The Mission of the Church. 21
Son, and the Holy Spirit. At once, then, the
Apostles, whose mission this title indicates, after
adding Matthias to their number, as the twelfth,
in the place of Judas, on the authority of the
prophecy in David's Psalm, and after receiving
the promised strength of .the Holy Ghost to
enable them to work miracles and preach, first
of all bore witness to the faith in Judaea and
established churches, and afterwards, going out
into the world, proclaimed the same teaching of
the same faith to the nations, and forthwith
founded churches in every city, from which all
other churches in their turn have received the
tradition of the faith and the seeds of doctrine ;
yes, and are daily receiving, that they may
become churches ; and it is on this account that
they too will be reckoned apostolic, as being
the offspring of apostolic churches. Every
kind of thing must be referred to its origin.
Accordingly, many and great as are the
churches, yet all is that one first Church which
is from the Apostles, that one whence all are
derived. So all are the first, and all are apos-
tolic, while all together prove their unity ; while
22 The Mission of the Church,
the fellowship of peace, and the title of brother-
hood, and the interchange of hospitality remain
amongst them — rites which are based on no
other principle than the one handing down of
the same faith.'
III.
' I believe in one Holy Catholic Church.'
This act of faith puts us in opposition to current
' undenominationalism,' and, as we hold it in the
Anglican Church, to the exclusive claim of the
Roman communion. Both oppositions must be
briefly considered.
Undenominationalism. By this name I refer
to the theory which represents men as first
becoming Christians by an act of individual
faith, and, after that, combining into Christian
societies, greater or smaller, as suits their pre-
dilections *. This, you observe, is the opposite
of the theory that men become Christians, in
the first instance, by incorporation into the
one Christian society, and then, after that, are
bound to realize individually their Christian
1 See app. note 2.
The Mission of the Church. 23
privileges. This second theory, if what I have
been saying is true, is the one which alone is
sanctioned in the original documents of Chris-
tianity. Whether it seems therefore at any
particular moment advantageous or disadvanta-
geous— in any case we are not responsible for
it. It is part of that which comes to us from
Jesus Christ our Master; but yet the objections
to it on the undenominational side are suffi-
ciently clear to demand that we should consider
what they mean.
'This doctrine of the Church seems reason-
able enough, as you state it/ people say, ' and we
recognize the strength of its appeal to the New
Testament and primitive Christian traditions.
But if it comes seriously to believing it, one
must ask, Is it not in too manifest conflict with
facts ? This suggestion of exclusive channels of
grace, does it square with facts, with the wide
and promiscuous diffusion of spiritual excellence
as the record of history and the experience of
life present it? Nay! I must have a freer
theory. Verily "the wind bloweth where it
listeth " — so is the movement of the free Spirit.'
24 The Mission of the Church.
Ah, yes! who could deny it? The Spirit
breatheth where He listeth. All life is His in
nature and in man. There is no being which
lies outside the action of the eternal Word or
His Spirit. Every movement of good in man
anywhere is of His breathing. Everywhere,
under His inspiration, men are seeking after
God, 'if haply they may feel after Him and find
Him,' and ' in every nation he that feareth God
and worketh righteousness,' feareth and worketh
with the help of the Holy Spirit, and in Him is
accepted of God. Thus, though in Hooker's
words l, ' It is not ordinarily God's will to be-
stow the grace of sacraments on any, but by
the sacraments ' ; yet God is not tied to any
special channels. There are no such things as
exclusive means of grace, means of grace as
to which one can say, 'God worketh here,
not elsewhere.' But this, after all, is no novel
concession. ' Deus non alligatur sacramentis
suis/ it was said of old. ' His ordinances
are laws for us, not for Him2.' In all ages
thoughtful theologians of almost all schools
1 E. P. v. 57. 4. 8 See app. note 3.
The Mission of the Church. 25
have seen that this truth is involved in the
recognition of the fatherhood of God, and
His all-rectifying and impartial justice. But
then, the rejoinder comes, what is it you claim
for the sacraments? Just what is involved
in the idea of ' covenant/ and in the idea of
'the household' of God. The state of cove-
nant carries us into a region beyond that of dim
and anxious seeking. It involves a clear dis-
closure of Himself by God, and, corresponding
with this, clear and distinct bestowals and
promises of grace. A household is a place
where food and nurture is definitely and syste-
matically provided. The joy of Christians is the
joy of sons in their father's household, children
of the covenant. This is what we claim for
sacraments : not that they are exclusive chan-
nels of grace, so that God cannot give except
through them the gifts of His love; but that
through them only, as elements in His unique
covenant, are definite graces pledged and guaran-
teed by the Divine fidelity ; so that the faithful
Christian transcends the conditions of anxious
enquiry and passes into the region where he
26 The Mission of the Church.
faithfully welcomes the assured gift, and fear-
lessly uses it as indeed given.
And if you press the question further, and ask,
' Does not your theory of the security of the
covenant involve the conception of " valid sacra-
ments " — sacraments, that is, that are only valid
when they are celebrated by persons properly
ordained in the due transmission of apostolical
authority ? and does not this theory leave out of
account what is, at least in Anglo-Saxon Chris-
tianity, an immense and solid part of the working
force of Christianity?' — I answer, We must
hold to this doctrine of apostolic succession as
bound up with the validity of some at least of the
sacraments. The idea of an ordained steward-
ship of divine gifts is inseparably associated
both in idea and in history with the sacramental
system. But what is meant by valid sacra-
ments ? The Greek word .Se'/foios, and the Latin
word 'validus,' have a definite meaning. The
opposite of secure or valid is not non-existent
but precarious. The fact that God promises to
give in one way does not destroy His power to
give in another. It were blasphemy, then, to
The Mission of the Church. 27
deny the Spirit's action where we see the Spirit's
fruits. It is impossible for one who thinks
seriously to ignore or underrate the vast debt
which English Christianity owes to noncon-
formist bodies, to bodies which have fallen quite
outside the action of the apostolic ministry. But
was there not a cause ? If we consider the sins,
the scandalous neglect and sluggishness of the
Church, is it so very wonderful that God should
have worked largely and freely outside the ap-
pointed and authorized ministries ? We should
think it blasphemy, then, to deny the spiritual
experience of the past or of the present as to the
freedom of the divine action, even when the
spiritual experience is only viewed from out-
side. Still less could we dream of asking any-
one who is not himself a Churchman to be false
to his own experience. But we may ask men to
be completely true to the whole of experience.
Now one part of experience is surely the disas-
trous present effect of our divisions. No serious
Christian can fail to desire most earnestly re-
stored fellowship among Christians. Some-
thing is so very wrong at present that we must
28 The Missoin of the Church.
ask over again, and more and more as circum-
stances throw back each man upon first prin-
ciples, What is the divinely intended basis or
form of the Christian religion ? And the answer
is ' by one Spirit were we all baptized into one
body/ The one body — you view it in history,
you trace it back to apostolic days — certainly its
main lineaments are throughout unmistakeable.
There have been many partial developments
and causes of division, and local beliefs and
changing customs and laws. But there is the
one tradition of the faith in its central features
constant and original : there are the apostolic
scriptures, the canon of which gradually takes
the place of the living authority of apostolic
teachers, as the ultimate court of Christian
appeal : there is the system of the sacraments :
there is the apostolically commissioned ministry,
with its stewardship of the gifts of truth and
grace l. These, as parts of the organism of the
Spirit, constitute for the whole of the first fifteen
centuries the fabric of Christianity. Since the
Reformation it is not too much to say that
1 See app. note 4.
The Mission of the Church. 29
historical enquiry in general, and in our own
days, biblical criticism, have rendered it in-
creasingly difficult to tear the Bible out of the
structure of the Church, out of the organism of
which it forms a part. Nor is it possible to find
in original Christianity a 'liberty of prophesy-
ing' which left men independent of the visible
Church : not in apostolic days, if the Acts of the
Apostles and the Pastoral Epistles and the
Epistle to the Corinthians are true witnesses :
not in later days, unless we do violence to the
existing evidence and make of Montanism the
truly conservative movement1.
In regard to the doctrine of apostolic suc-
cession, I must say one other word. It has
been, in history, too much identified with the
threefold form of the ministry2. I believe
myself that the evidence, as we have it at
present, points cogently to this conclusion :
that since apostolic days there have been
always three orders of the ministry; not only
1 See The Church and the Ministry, pp. 207-213, and
app. notes H and I.
* See further, The Chucrh and the Ministry, pp. 72 ff.
30 The Mission of the Church.
deacons and presbyters (or bishops according
to the earliest use of the term), but also
ministers of the apostolic order, superior to
the presbyters, such as Timothy and Titus,
or those ' prophets ' of whom we hear in the
earliest Christian literature. I believe that
what occurred was the gradual localization in
particular churches of this apostolic order of
ministers which previously had not usually been
so localized, and that there was no time when
presbyters or presbyter bishops had either
the supreme authority of government or the
power to ordain ; the change which took place
consisting only in the localization of an order
of men previously exercising a more general
supervision, and the reservation of the name
' bishop * to these localized apostolic officers.
But there are certain facts which have led
some good authorities to suppose that, at one
time, all the presbyters in some churches
held together the chief authority in govern-
ment and the power to ordain, the ' episcopate '
being as it were 'in commission' among them.
Now this theory has, I think, from the point
The Mission of the Church.
of view of ecclesiastical principle, been too
much discussed. It does not affect the prin-
ciple of apostolic succession in the least.
The principle is that no man in the Church
can validly exercise any ministry, except such
as he has received from a source running
back ultimately to the apostles, so that any
ministry which a person takes upon himself
to exercise, which is not covered by an
apostolically received commission, is invalid.
Now, if the order of presbyters at any time
held the right to ordain, that was because it
had been entrusted to them by apostolic men.
It no more disturbs the principle of apostolic
succession than if your lordship ordained all
the presbyters in this diocese to-day to epis-
copal functions. There would ensue a great
deal of inconvenience and confusion, but
nothing that would violate the principle of
apostolical succession. On the other hand,
the departure from this principle is manifest
when presbyters in the sixteenth or subsequent
century took upon themselves to ordain other
presbyters. They were taking on themselves
32 The Mission of the Church.
an office which, beyond all question, they had
not received — which was not imparted to them
in their ordination. There had been a per-
fectly clear understanding for many cen-
turies what did and what did not belong to
the presbyter's office. This is the principle
which it is essential to maintain, and its title-
deeds lie in the continuous record of Church
history.
IV.
We stand, then, repudiating the undenomina-
tional conception of Christianity. On the
other hand, we Anglican Churchmen stand
repudiating the claim of Rome. When you
state the doctrine of the visible Church,
sacraments and ministry, people sometimes
tell you that the Roman Church is the only
logical expression of that theory. Now, his-
torically, the Roman Church is not the develop-
ment of the whole of the Church, but only
of a part of it; and this historical fact would
not matter so much if spiritually the Roman
Church represented the whole of Christianity —
The Mission of the Church. 33
the whole of Christianity as it finds expression
in the first Christian age, or in the New
Testament. But the more accurately any one
studies the subject, the more clearly he must,
I think, come to see that the Roman Church,
whatever be its graces, powers, and excellences,
is a one-sided development of Christianity: a
development of certain qualities in Christianity
with which the Latin genius had special affinity,
its disciplinary and governmental powers, but
a development which ignored other qualities
at least as certainly belonging to Christianity,
such as the strengthening of individuality which
it is intended to promote, the responsibility
which it inculcates for personal enquiry, the
love of the bare truth, the considerateness, the
fairness which it ought to foster. The Roman
Church does not represent the whole of Chris-
tianity, nor the whole spirit of Scripture or of
the early Church. To some of us this will
seem understating the truth ; but a statement
of the truth as far as it goes it certainly is.
Now it is not only the case that the Roman
Church does not in fact represent the whole of
34 The Mission of the Church.
the Christian spirit, but it is compelled by its
principles to exorcize part of it, and cast it
out as evil. It has committed itself to un-
historical doctrines, e.g. that the pope not only
is, but has always been, infallible, that Mary
was immaculately conceived, and that these
doctrines have always been recognized elements
in the Catholic faith. These dogmatic positions
it puts outside the region of free enquiry and
criticism. Thus it is compelled by these un-
historical dogmas to condemn the free appeal
to history on matter defined by the Church, and
to repudiate the responsibility of a private, i.e.
personal, judgment on matters of faith. And
this repudiation is bound up with a deficient
appreciation of the claim of truth, intellectually
and morally, for its own sake no less than for its
results.
For some minds Rome is, so to speak, put
out of court by positive abuses, e.g. the with-
drawal of the chalice from the laity, exagger-
ated devotion to St. Mary and other saints,
obligatory confession to the priest, compulsory
celibacy of the clergy. To other minds it appears
The Mission of the Church. 35
a more convincing consideration that Rome is
not, and cannot be, the whole of Christianity.
For it is certainly true that Christianity was
not meant to be narrowed as it came down the
ages, or to become less and less applicable for
the freeing of the whole of our manhood.
And I want to make it plain to you that
this narrowing of Christianity by a development
which however powerful is one-sided, coincides
with the abandonment of the ancient rule of
faith. The ancient rule of faith involved an
appeal to Scripture as the ultimate criterion in
matters of doctrine and morals. Nothing could
be required of a Christian as an article of faith
which could not be proved out of Scripture.
This great principle secured the Church from
the danger of an accumulation of dogmas such
as the Roman development has in fact brought
with it. The doctrine of the Immaculate Con-
ception, the doctrine of the Treasury of Merits,
with its correlative in Indulgences, have the
effect of narrowing the appeal of Christianity
by excluding large classes of minds who desire
historical evidence for historical facts, and who
D 2
36 The Mission of the Church.
resent the undue accumulation of spiritual
power in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities.
But these doctrines could not have been pro-
pounded as articles of faith so long as the
appeal to Scripture was legitimately retained.
There is nothing in Scripture which can even
with specious pretence be appealed to on their
behalf. Thus it is that the maintenance of the
ancient appeal to Scripture is the main security
that the faith shall not be narrowed as the
centuries go on. It shall develop but not
narrow. It is by this appeal to Scripture that
Anglicanism stands or falls in its controversy
with Rome. Yes, and it is able to make it stand.
We have no cause to apologize for our posi-
tion ; we have cause rather to be thankful
for it. Anglicanism represents a combination
which, if Christianity is to do its work, must
exist and be amongst the most beneficent forces
of catholicity in the world. It is the glory of
the Anglican Church that at the Reformation
she repudiated neither the ancient structure of
Catholicism, nor the new and freer movement.
Upon the ancient structure — the creeds, the
The Mission of the Church. 37
canon, the hierarchy, the sacraments— she re-
tained her hold while she opened her arms to
the new learning, the new appeal to Scripture,
the freedom of historical criticism and the duty
of private judgment. No doubt she made
mistakes. But in the main she approved her-
self a wise steward, bringing forth out of her
treasury things new and old. Therefore it is
that she stands in such a unique condition of
promise at the present moment among the
Churches of Christendom.
I believe then in one Holy Catholic Church.
This visible structure of the Church is im-
perfect as you see it at present; imperfect in
its unity, because human arrogance and im-
patience have brought about division ; imperfect
in catholicity, because human slackness has
left so large a part of the world still outside
its area ; imperfect in sanctity through the law-
lessness of human sin. Still it is this structure
which has been given to us, in and through
which to work for God. In its authorization
and in its possibilities it remains divine.
Can I express the reality of our responsi-
38 The Mission of the Church.
bility for the Church, or the limits to our responsi-
bility, better than in words we read yesterday ?
' Mordecai said to Esther, If thou altogether
holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there
enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews
from another place ; but thou and thy father's
house shall be destroyed ; and who knoweth
whether thou art not come to the kingdom for
such a time as this l ? ' That is, first : We cannot
destroy the Church of God. As that lies out-
side our responsibilities in its structure, so it
lies outside our power to destroy it. The gates
of death shall not prevail against it ; and no
failure or sin on our part can imperil it. How-
ever we behave ' Enlargement and deliverance
shall arise to the Jews — to the Israel of God —
from another place.' But in our own particular
district of responsibility, or within ourselves, we
can destroy the Church of God. 'Thou and
thy Father's house shall be destroyed.' And if
there is trial here, is there not opportunity also ?
'Who knoweth whether thou art not come to
the kingdom for such a time as this ? '
1 Esther iv. 14.
LECTURE II.
UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
' But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then
peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy
and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.'
St. James iii. 17.
Reverend Father in God, my brethren of
the clergy and of the laity, — The Church, we
saw, is a visible society ; that is, an organized
body with distinctive rites, officers, conditions of
membership. But the elements in her constitu-
tion which render her a visible society do not
disqualify her for permanence or catholicity.
Her definite creed, her fixed canon of sacred
books, her sacraments, her ministry, belong
to no particular epoch and no particular race
or kind of men ; they belong to what is
simply human in us ; they are as well fitted
40 The Mission of the Church.
for one age as for another : that is to say,
they are elements in an institution intended
for universality — the Catholic Church. They
belong to us therefore to-day, in our special
opportunities and difficulties, as truly as they
belonged to any section of the Church in past
time. Now, -if with this conviction we look
around and ask ourselves whether the Church
here and now is making full use of the
materials with which God's bounty has sup-
plied it for the conversion and edification of
mankind, or if not, why not, we are struck at
once with what is obviously the main present
hindrance to our effectiveness — I mean our
divisions.
The acuteness of the divisions inside our
own Church is less, I suppose we may say
with thankfulness, than it was some years
ago. Parties in the Church have been
brought more together. It has been the
main advantage, perhaps, of Church meetings,
whether diocesan or general — Diocesan Confer-
ences or Church Congresses — that they have
brought men of different schools to know, under-
Unity within the Church of England. 41
stand and tolerate one another better; and
there is undoubtedly, speaking generally, less
strain in England among religious parties
than there was. They are merging more the
one into the other. They are learning more
the one from the other. The great streams
of Church revival are undoubtedly fusing in
their result, their issue, their influence. In
a word, we are less divided than we were;
but still far more divided than we ought to
be. Internal divisions still constitute an im-
mense hindrance. We are to consider them
this afternoon.
I.
The Church of England provides us with
a definite limit to division— or at least to
legitimate division — in providing us with a rule
of faith. What is this Anglican rule of faith
in principle, and to what does it appeal? I
cannot answer this question better than by
recalling to your minds the fact that the
Convocation which imposed on the clergy
subscription to the Articles of Religion, issued
42 The Mission of the Church.
a canon to preachers enjoining them to 'teach
nothing in their sermons which they should
require to be devoutly held and believed by
the people except what is agreeable to the
doctrine of the Old and New Testaments and
what the ancient fathers and catholic bishops
have collected out of the said doctrine/ The
English Church appeals in some sense to
Holy Scripture and Catholic tradition.
If we examine the earliest document of
Christianity we find that the Apostles taught a
certain body of truth which was to be the
mould of Christian character. This was called
from the first 'the tradition/ 'the apostles'
doctrine/ 'the faith once for all delivered to
the saints V St. Paul recognizes in this tradi-
tion a limit even to his own teaching : ' Though
we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other
gospel unto you than that which we have
preached unto you, let him be accursed2.'
This tradition, then was the thing handed
over once for all to the Church. The Church
1 2 Thess. iii. 6; Gal. i. 9; Acts ii. 42; Jude 3. Cf.
Rom. vi. 17. 2 Gal. i. 8.
Unity within the Church of England. 43
was to be 'the pillar and ground of the
truth1,' because, as a visible society, she was
entrusted with the task of handing on this
tradition of faith and life2.
If we now pass beyond the apostolic
period we find this tradition of the faith—
which later down was embodied in the Creed
— being taught in the sub-apostolic churches ;
so that when the Christians of this period
were confronted with the Gnostic heresy,
they met the loose and shifting forms of ideal-
ism which are grouped under this name by
an appeal to the consent of the apostolic
churches. ' Look/ they said, ' at the various
churches, and you find them teaching the
same creed. They cannot have got to such
agreement by accident.' So Tertullian put it in
his incomparable epigram : ' Is it possible that
so many churches of such importance should
have hit, by an accident of error, on an iden-
tical creed3?'
1 i Tim. iii. 15. 2 See app. note 5.
3 De praescr. 28 : ' Ecquid verisimile ut tot ac tantae
(ecclesiae) in unam fidem erraverint.'
44 The Mission of the Church.
This tradition constitutes the primary teaching
for Christians. Look at the New Testament :
you find it is not intended for primary teaching.
Every book of the New Testament is manifestly
written for the edification of people who had
been already instructed in the doctrine of the
Church. Thus if you look at the preface to
St. Luke's Gospel, you find that St. Luke's
object in writing is that Theophilus may know
more accurately and more fully what he had
already become familiar with by oral instruc-
tion. So St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude,
St. John, and the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews imply that they write to remind or
recall or edify those who had been already
instructed in the rudiments of faith and life1.
The Church, then, is the primary teacher; the
Church tradition is to constitute the first lesson.
What, then, is the function of Holy Scrip-
ture? It is to be the perpetual criterion of
teaching. It is the quality of tradition that
it deteriorates, it becomes one-sided. Thus
1 See i Cor. xi. 23 ; xv. 1-3 ; Gal. i. 8-9 ; Heb. v. 12 ;
2 Peter i. 12 ; James 1-19 [R. V.] ; Jude 3 ; i John ii. 20.
Unity within the Church of England. 45
there is no doubt that Christian doctrine
would have undergone considerable alteration
if there had been no court of appeal. The
departure from primitive doctrine which in
fact took place in the mediaeval Church was,
as I have said, mainly due to the fact that
the Church abandoned this constant appeal to
Holy Scripture as that which is the sole
final criterion of the faith. The Church, then,
is the primary teacher; the Bible is the final
court of appeal in all matters which concern
the faith and morals of the Christian Church.
' The Church to teach, the Bible to prove'—
that is the rule of faith.
II.
On the basis of this rule of faith, let us now
consider what in fact is the doctrine which the
Church of England sets before us as authorita-
tive.
i. She sets before us, first of all, the Creeds.
The Creeds give us the doctrine of God ; God as
He is revealed in Christ ; God in His triune
being, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Also the
46 The Mission of the Church.
doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God,
who being God, for our sakes was made man.
Also the doctrine of the ministry of the Holy
Spirit in the Church — one, holy, catholic
and apostolic. Also, finally, the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body and of eternal judg-
ment.
Now all these are parts of the universal and
primitive tradition of the Church, and they
respond to the requirement of the appeal to
Scripture. We do not get them from the Bible
in the sense that each one picks his religion for
himself out of the book; but, taught by the
Church, we find them in the Bible.
2. Passing now beyond what is given us in
creeds, we come to the Catechism. The Cate-
chism lays down what is to be known and
believed by every Christian at starting. There-
fore it incorporates and interprets the creed.
It "gives us also a moral rule of life in the
Ten Commandments, with their interpretation.
Then a rule of worship and sacramental life.
The Lord's Prayer is rightly treated not as one
prayer among many, but as a pattern and type
Unity within the Church of England. 47
of all Christian prayer. And the sacraments
are interpreted for us in the instances of
Baptism and the Eucharist, as ordained modes
of communion with Christ. All these elements
in the Catechism have formed part of the tradi-
tion of the Church from the first ; and again
they are justified by reference to the New
Testament. The same may be said of the
doctrine implied in the services with which all
are intended to be acquainted — the services of
Baptism, Confirmation, Matrimony, Ordination—
which more or less supplement, on the sacra-
mental side, the teaching of the Catechism.
3. Beyond this, we have the Articles. Of the
Articles you find a certain number, and those
the most definite, are occupied with restating
the truths of the Creed1. Four others2 are
occupied with laying down the principles of the
rule of faith — the authority of the Church in
matters of doctrine, the truth of the Creeds, and
the necessity of the appeal to Scripture.
Whilst the inspiration of Holy Scripture is
implied, there is no special doctrine laid down
1 Artt. I-V. 2 Artt. VI-VIII and XX.
48 The Mission of the Church.
in regard to its particular nature or limits. In
other Articles1 we have clear statements as to
original sin, on the principle of justification by
faith, and on other matters of less importance.
If you look further you will find, the more care-
fully you study them, that in many respects
their language is studiedly vague. It is the
purpose of a dogma to define. For example,
when the Arian controversy arose, and the Greek
Creed was re-moulded to repudiate the teaching
which undermined the Godhead of our Lord,
the effort was to seize the exact point of the
controversy, and, by the selection of the most
definite term possible, to exclude and condemn
what was regarded as subversive of the whole
basis of Christian doctrine and life.
On some central points the Church of
England possesses, as has just been pointed out,
definite and explicit dogmas ; but in regard to
many matters which were in controversy at the
period of the Reformation, on points which
belonged respectively to the Calvinistic,
Lutheran, and Tridentine positions, you find
1 Artt. IX-XI.
Unity within the Church of England. 49
that, as a matter of fact, the Articles appear
to have been intended not as definite solutions
but rather as ' articles of peace ' ; they aim at
shelving rather than defining questions. You
have quite definitely Calvinistic articles formu-
lated at the period of the Reformation and
Lutheran articles and Tridentine decrees : but
the Articles of the Church of England on points
then in controversy lack the definiteness of the
Lutheran, or Calvinistic, or Tridentine de-
cisions. And we may be thankful the Church
of England did not commit herself. Indefinite
formulas are not indeed satisfactory. They may
appear to say much and in fact say little. This
is, I think, the case with many of our articles.
But none of greater definiteness drawn up at
that moment could have failed to commit us to
what, in the great issue, would have imperilled
our position. The moment was one of transi-
tion and movement. It is very untrue to call it
a moment of settlement. This is apparent in
retrospect. What has become of definite Cal-
vinism and definite Lutheranism all over
Europe ? Has Rome stopped at the Triden-
50 The Mission of the Church.
tine position? Had the sixteenth century the
materials at its disposal which are necessary
for understanding the early history of Christian
doctrine ? However unsatisfactory then the
articles are positively as statements of truth,
they are satisfactory in what they are not. It is
the very fact that the Church of England at the
Reformation did not commit herself to any one of
the three then dominant tendencies, which leaves
us now at the present moment in a unique
position of hopefulness among the Churches of
Europe. We are left standing firm on the
Creeds, the Sacraments, the apostolic succession
of the ministry ; and on that basis we are to rise
with the help of the clearer knowledge we now
have, to the full apprehension and presentation
of the ancient faith.
Thus for example in the case of the Sacra-
ments, if we seek to know what the Church of
England lays down for our acceptance, you find
certain broad limits of belief clearly marked, and
within these a space which is left without further
definition. On the one hand, the Church of
England in the latter part of the Catechism, in
Unity within the Church of England. 51
the offices of Baptism and Holy Commu-
nion and in the 25th Article, excludes the
Zwinglian view, according to which the sacra-
ments are merely symbols. In repudiation of
this view the article accepts the mediaeval
definition of sacraments as 'effectual signs of
grace ' (efficacia signa gratiae), \. e. symbolic acts
which not only symbolize but also effect or
convey what they symbolize — God Himself,
according to His promise, working invisibly on
the occasion of each visible ceremony J. On the
other hand, the Church of England repudiates
certain current mediaeval doctrines in regard to
the sacraments ; as, for instance, the mediaeval
doctrine of Transubstantiation, which is declared,
among other things, by denying the reality of the
outward part of the sacrament of the Eucharist,
to overthrow the nature of a sacrament, which
has an outward and natural as well as an
inward and supernatural part.
Once again, in regard to Holy Order, the
Church of England requires the maintenance
of the apostolic succession. She confines her
1 See app. note 6.
E 2
52 The Mission of the Church.
ministry to those who have been actually
ordained in this manner. She does not re-
quire the re-ordination of Roman Catholic
priests who join the Anglican communion, but
she does require ministers of religious bodies
who have not received episcopal ordination to be
ordained afresh. Thus she requires that men
should in fact have received their ministry by
apostolic succession, whereas on the other hand
she does not require any exact or explicit ex-
pression of belief in regard to it l. Once more,
in regard to Confirmation, the language of the
service implies the bestowal of the Holy Spirit
on the occasion — the gift of the Spirit and the
Spirit's gifts — but there is no exact expression
of belief required in regard to the nature of
the bestowal.
Obviously, whether we like it or not, we are
left with certain clear limits of belief laid down,
and within these limits a considerable space is left
open within which different opinions are per-
missible and possible.
For my own part, it seems to me a very toler-
1 See app. note 7.
Unity within the Church of England. 53
able state of things that a Church should subsist
on a very limited amount of positive dogmatic re-
quirement, on the basis of which the individual
teacher and the individual learner shall grow
together into a fuller perception of the whole
meaning of the Catholic faith.
III.
On the basis of dogmatic requirement which
I have thus endeavoured to state let us consider
what is the position of the most conspicuous
parties in the Church of England. I mean those
three traditional parties of which we have been
accustomed to speak as High, Low, and Broad.
Speaking generally, their genesis and charac-
teristics are sufficiently apparent. The High
Church party has been traditionally identified
with the assertion and maintenance of what we
should call ecclesiastical, sacerdotal and sacra-
mental principle. The Evangelical party has
been specially associated, on the Bother hand,
with the maintenance of principles such as circle
round the doctrine of justification by faith,
and the necessitv of conversion. The less-
54 The Mission of the Church.
defined Broad Church party has had for its
most characteristic positive function — by dis-
tinction from what it has disparaged or denied —
to emphasize good moral living as the one end
and test of Christianity : to maintain the principle
that all truth which is preached, all ordinances
ministered, are to be judged by the tendency to
promote good Christian living.
Obviously each of these three positions is
rooted in something which the Church of
England undoubtedly maintains. What is pre-
sumably the case is that the maintenance of
truth in each case has become by reaction more
or less one-sided, and there has been conse-
quently antagonism through want of correlation.
This suggestion it will be worth our while to
consider in some detail.
I will start from the point of view of sacra-
mentalism — the point of view of the High
Churchman. He maintains the principle that
the system of the Church, with her apostolic
ministry and sacraments, is the divinely ap-
pointed framework of the spiritual religion.
This principle I will endeavour to interpret,
Unity within the Church of England. 55
and show its relation to the points of view
identified respectively with Evangelicalism and
Broad Churchmanship.
The ' spiritual ' religion. What is meant by
this term? In religious discussions among us
the term is always being used and yet not very
often defined. In the ordinary English mind
the term ' spiritual ' still carries with it asso-
ciations of indefiniteness. The ' spiritual ' is
supposed to be opposed to the ' material,' and
so to anything tangible, visible, definite ; or
' spiritual ' is opposed to what is ' literal ' in
interpretation — it is metaphorical, and so again
indefinite.
Thus external ordinances, because they are
external, rules that are definite, because they are
definite, truths that are exactly stated, because
the}7 are exactly stated, are more or less com-
monly supposed to be unspiritual and contrary
to the character of the spiritual religion.
Now this state of mind is in fact due to a
fundamental mistake which a little steady
thinking ought to uproot.
To consider the question as a matter of
56 The Mission of the Church.
language. ' Spiritual ' in the New Testament
is not generally opposed to what is material
or visible, but rather to what is carnal— to that
in which the higher part of our nature is dragged
at the heels of the lower l. Thus the birth of
Isaac is spiritual — ' he was born/ St. Paul says,
' after the spirit ' ; while the birth of Ishmael is
carnal ' after the flesh 2/ not because the birth
of Isaac was one whit less visible or material
than the birth of Ishmael, but because it came
about so as to express a spiritual and divine
purpose, and not as the outcome of mere physical
passion. Or, again, what is spiritual may be
opposed to what is formal — to an act, that is,
which is external only and has no moral meaning
behind it. So St. Paul speaks of circumcision
which is ' in the letter,' that is, in external form
only, and not ' in the spirit/ as having nothing
moral corresponding to it3; but, on the other
hand, the supremely spiritual act, the act of
Christ when 'in His eternal spirit He offered
Himself without spot to God/ gains its meaning
1 See app. note 8. 2 Gal. iv. 29 ; cf. i Cor. x. 3, 4.
s Rom. ii. 29.
Unity within the Church of England. 57
through its being visible and enacted in the flesh
— it was an ' offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all V There is indeed one passage
where 'spiritually' seems to mean metaphori-
cally or allegorically in the matter of interpre-
tation, the passage in the Apocalypse in which
the city is spoken of, ' which spiritually iscalled
Sodom and Egypt2,' where it is implied that
these sinful places have a mystical meaning,
because their sinfulness represented a principle
wider than themselves. But this use of the
word ' spiritually ' is unique in the New Testa-
ment, and in itself it only implies that certain
definite outward objects and incidents enshrine
eternal principles.
Positively, then, what does the New Testa-
ment language teach us to understand by the
spiritual religion, as opposed to what is carnal or
formal or unreal ? The central idea of the
spirit is that of life : the Christian Church is
spiritual because in a unique sense she, on her
pentecostal birthday, received the communi-
cation of divine life, in its threefold form of
1 Heb. ix. 14 ; x. 10. 2 Rev. xi. 8.
58 The Mission of the Church.
power, of knowledge and of love. The spirit is
power : as for the ' letter ' — the written laws
of the Old Covenant — it could effect nothing.
It could inform the conscience or terrify it, but
it could not strengthen the will and make it
effective for good ; but the Spirit gave life, so
that the ' requirement of the law ' is ' fulfilled
in us who walk after the Spirit1.' Again, the
Spirit is knowledge : as for the ritual ordinances
of the old law they were dumb forms ; they
carried with them little information, or such
information as witnessed to their own inade-
quacy; but the Spirit fulfils the heart of the
Christian with a joyful intelligence of the mind
and character of God, a happy insight into the
meaning of all he is required to do. Once
more, the Spirit is love : as for the old law, it
laid injunctions upon men, which had to be
obeyed, simply as they were enjoined, with
nothing more than the obedience of slaves;
but the men of the New Covenant have received
the Spirit of God, and, one spirit with Him,
they act in conscious correspondence with His
1 Rom. viii. 4.
Unity within the Church of England. 59
redemptive purpose, and serve in the glad co-
operation of loving sons.
Power ; intelligence ; love ; power from God,
intelligence of God and His purposes, love to
God in Himself and in His creatures — these
make up the content of spirituality. But power,
intelligence, love, as they are represented in
human beings, beings of body and of soul,
beings linked to one another in outward fellow-
ship, can be in no sort of opposition to the world
of matter and form. So holy is this human
flesh, this thing of matter and form, that the Son
of God has taken it for ever into His own person,
and glorified it in the Godhead. Acts the most
spiritual, then, like the sacrifice of Jesus, are not
one whit less spiritual because they are external ;
truth, the more spiritually it is known, is so
known as to be expressed the more exactly ;
life, the more spiritual it is, becomes the more
definite in purpose and concrete in result. The
acceptable worship, the worship ' in spirit and in
truth V is as much an external worship as that
supreme worship which the Son of Man offered
1 St. John iv. 24.
60 The Mission of the Church.
to the Father in the sacrifice of Calvary, or
offers still at the glory of the right hand ; but it
is worship which enlists all the full energy of
will, and intelligence, and love.
The Christian Church had very early in her
career an opportunity of showing that she did
not conceive spirituality to be in any antagonism
at all to external religion. She came out in her
earliest history into a philosophical atmosphere
impregnated with what is called ' dualism '-
that is, the assertion of the antagonism of the
flesh and the spirit. Greek philosophy in its
youth, in spite of its intense realization of the
beauty of outward form, never succeeded in
shaking off this delusion : upon its old age
it returned with powerful reinforcements and
brought it into captivity. The reinforcements
lay in that wave of Oriental influence which in
the early centuries of our era flooded our
Western world. All the then prevalent sects
of Gnosticism, and Manichaeism, all the forms
of philosophical dualism, had this in common—
they thought of evil as lying, more or less
completely, in the material world, in the flesh ;
Unity within the Church of England. 61
they thought of the material world as too low,
too vile, to be in direct contact with God or the
direct work of His hand ; they thought that true
religion lay not in the consecration of material
and common things, but in getting aloof from
them and separate from them. To get away
from the body was to get near to God, and the
highest religious state was that rapt ecstasy
in which the soul, having become unconscious
of all external surroundings and independent
of all bodily affinities, could contemplate God.
The Church's primary and great conflict was
with this temper of mind as represented in
Gnosticism. There is, I believe, no later struggle
in which her true principles emerge so clearly,
as certainly there was none in which she had to
struggle so hard for very life. The opposing prin-
ciples came to the front in a fourfold theory: —
(1) that the material world could not be
directly the handiwork of the good God, the
Father of Jesus Christ.
(2) that God could not exactly by incarnation
have taken into Himself the human flesh and
been born and suffered and died.
62 The Mission of the Church.
(3) that the Old Testament, as earthy and
sense-bound, could not be the work of the same
God as the New.
(4) that the acceptance in faith of a definite
creed and definite ordinances and definite
scriptures might be good enough for the vulgar
and ordinary Christian, but the inner circle
of the perfect and the illuminated, the spiritual
men, soared above those restrictions and were
independent of them.
To these positions the Christian Church in
its different parts returned a blank negative.
(1) The whole world, they said, material and
spiritual, is of one creation : it is rebel wills that
are the source of moral evil, not material nature,
which is God's work, and rightly used is very
good.
(2) So good is material nature, that God has
really entered into it and assumed for ever the
human flesh.
(3) The Old Testament is of one piece with
the New, and is to be interpreted on that
principle of gradual development which is a
conspicuous law of the divine working, and by
Unity 'within the Church of England. 63
which the spiritual destiny of the universe
gradually appears.
(4) The outward ordinances, the fixed tradition
and Scriptures, the ministry, sacraments, and
discipline of the Church, are part of her essence
and belong to her glory. They are her glory.
You in the pagan world, or you who borrow the
pagan principle, may have one sort of religion
for the intellectual and another for the simple.
But it is the glory of our religion that she puts
them on the same basis ; declares every man
susceptible of spiritual perfection, and holds
them altogether from birth to death — high and
low, rich and poor, one with another *.
Life in God, knowledge of God, communion
with God, may be to the pagan only the ultimate
goal of the rapt ecstatic, or the privilege of a
philosophic self-abstraction from the things of
sense possible to a very few: we say to all
men, Take it as the gift of God, made tangible
and visible in common ordinances ; the sub-
mitting to be taught a creed, the reception of
a washing of water and a laying on of hands ;
1 See app. note 9.
64 The Mission of the Church.
the common partaking of bread and wine, these
are simple unostentatious acts, which all are
capable of, which all can approach. But through
these common things of the common world our
God, who took, and wears, our common flesh,
still communicates His hidden essence.
This was the boast of the Church ; and these
sacramental principles, we are bound to note,
antedated long the development of ritual.
Elaborate ritual is to the Catholic Churchman,
who knows his principles, never more than a
matter of variable expediency. At least, in early
days a Christian like Tertullian was not less
sacramental for being somewhat puritanical.
People are scandalized, he says, by the simplicity
of our sacraments : they contrast the common-
ness of the means with the greatness of the
gift promised. The heathen rites, on the other
hand, gain imposingness by pomp. But with
us a man descends into the water, and a few
words are spoken, and he is washed, and there
is no apparatus or elaboration ; and for this
very reason it seems improbable that the gift
of eternal life should have been conveyed.
Unity within the Church of England. 65
But what a miserable incredulity, cries Ter-
tullian, have we here, which denies to God
His proper attributes - simplicity and power l !
The Church then is the home of the spiritual
religion because she, in special and pre-eminent
sense, is endowed with the Spirit of Christ, the
Spirit of power and intelligence and love. And
the manifold gifts of this Spirit are distributed
in such a way as befits the 'household of God,'
in which men are to be ' fed with their portion
of meat in due season.' Each stage ot life has
its special need : each special need has its
appropriate gift ; and the appropriate gift has its
ordained channel: all is ordered and simple
as befits a household of security and peace.
The beginning of the new life, which Chris-
tianity perpetuates from Christ, lies in that
regenerating act of God upon the soul, in
which by the Holy Spirit's action it is united
to Christ and admitted into the fellowship of
His holy body ; and this regenerating act is
ministered through an outward channel which
is symbolical and also more, the ordinance of
1 See app. note 10.
F
66 The Mission of the Church.
washing, which symbolizes and also conveys
the cleansing gift of the new life. And next
to birth comes strengthening. The strength of
the Christian, as also his consecration to share
in the priesthood and royalty of Christ, lies in
the inward presence of the Holy Ghost, and
this gift of the Holy Ghost is communicated
since apostolic days by the laying on of hands.
And the life imparted must be nourished : and
again the perpetual nourishing of the new life
out of the fulness of the Christ is effected
through the operation of the Holy Ghost upon
the simple symbolical elements of bread and
wine, mingling the heavenly with the earthly
things.
It is by the same principle that the general
human instinct which is recognized in Christian
marriage has its benediction in a special ordin-
ance giving definiteness and sanctity to the
mutual engagements of man and wife. So also
that original distinction in the Christian society
of the pastor and the flock is emphasized by a
special ordination which solemnly conveys in
outward form the consecrating and empower-
Unity within the Church of England. 67
ing of the man to his share in the apostolic
ministry ; and through the outward form is
pledged the accompaniment of the inward
qualifying gift. Once more, the scandalous
sin which outrages the Christian community,
or the secret sin which burdens the troubled
and perplexed conscience, has its appropriate
remedy in the special discipline of penitence,
which, first public and then private, at one
time voluntary, at another compulsory, at one
time occasional, at another normal, has ever
remained a permanent fact of the Church
tradition — an outward ceremony of penitence
and restoration, which is accompanied by a
spiritual and heavenly acquittal, and is a part
of that rich storage of graces with which the
Church encompasses our varying needs, and
leads us on from the font where she has bap-
tized us to the death-bed where she still with
holy rites ushers us into the unseen world.
The Church is the home of the Spirit, whose
manifold gifts are ordered and distributed in
correspondence with our advancing needs: as
she is also the home of a definite disclosure
F 2
68 The Mission of the Church.
of God, Who has communicated Himself to
man, and revealed Himself in the person of
His Son1.
This idea of the Church, as one states it,
seems most credible, most natural. The
strength of its appeal to tradition, to the earliest
traditions of many Churches, is undoubted. Its
sanction, in the language of the New Testa-
ment, is hardly more open to question ; while,
once again, it is in conspicuous agreement
with the needs of men, and with what one
may call the principle of the Incarnation — the
dignity which the Incarnation gives to material
things. But there is no idea so true as not
to admit of being abused. And, in fact, this
Church idea has so degenerated at times into
formalism, or materialism, or tyranny, as to
account for, if not wholly to justify, reactions
— reactions which are one-sided. It is only so
that it could have come about— as conspicuously
it has come about in our own country — that
St. Paul's doctrine of Justification by Faith
could be put into opposition to what is also
1 See app. note n.
Unity within the Church of England. 69
St. Paul's own doctrine of Church and Sacra-
ments1, and identified with a party of its own,
while it has been left to another less defined
party to reiterate that all religion has after all
no other end or test than the production of
good living. What is it but a miserable and
foolish one-sidedness that can ever have put
these truths into antagonism one to another?
For St. Paul's doctrine of Justification by Faith,
what is it ? It means that what justifies a man,
or puts him into a relation of acceptance with
God, is not anything material, or external, like
circumcision, or any methodical observance of
a prescribed rule like the Jewish Law, but
something more true to man's fundamental de-
pendence upon God ; it is the surrender of
man's being into the hand of God considered
as making in Christ the simple offer of His
love. Wearied with his efforts to justify him-
self, wearied with his own false independence,
man at last, within or without the discipline
of the Jewish Law, learns to find his true
1 See Rom. vi. 3 ; Tit. iii. 5 ; Acts xix. 1-7 ; i Cor.
x. 16 ; xi. 23-34 ; 2 Tim. i. 6.
70 The Mission of the Church.
peace in surrendering at discretion to God,
and simply accepting the offer of His love.
This is justifying faith ; it establishes the right
relation of the soul to God. But it is the
beginning, not the end, of that relation. The
man grows 'from faith to faith'; or (again in
St. Paul's words) he 'has access by faith into
that grace wherein' for the future 'he stands1.'
That is, the believing soul, whose simple sur-
render to God's promises has removed all the
obstacles to his justification, is baptized in the
'bath of regeneration,' 'baptized into Christ.'
He receives the Spirit, he enters into the
communion of the body and blood of Christ.
In this new position, the function of his faith
is changed. Intellectually it dwells upon the
person of the Redeemer, and passes from faith
into knowledge ; morally, it keeps hold of God
who has apprehended the soul; also it be-
comes a perpetual correspondence with the
movements of the Spirit whom it has received ;
a perpetual assimilation, manducation, appro-
priation of spiritual gifts.
1 Rom. i. 17 ; v. 2.
Unity within the Church of England. 7*
Christians in the New Testament are never
regarded as persons who need to ask for the
Spirit as if they had not already received Him ;
but they are called upon to stir up, to use the
gift which is already in them, or to abstain
from grieving the Spirit whom they already
possess *. The function of faith in the Chris-
tian life is to draw upon or realize its existing
resources.
But all this doctrine of faith is in no kind
of antagonism to the doctrine of the Church
and the sacraments, rightly understood. Every-
where life and growth consists in an appropri-
ation by an organism of what is supplied to it
from without. This holds good in the spiritual
life. The Church is, in recent language, the
environment of the soul, the sacraments con-
stitute the external supply. The supply is
real. The sacramental gifts are valid through
the Spirit's action without any effort on our
part. They are God's gifts simply. But their
whole effect on us depends on the degree of
assimilative and appropriative effort — the degree
1 See app. note 12.
72 The Mission of the Church.
of faith — which we exercise. According to our
faith is it done to us. This was the law of
Christ's physical healings during His life on
earth. The instrument of healing was the
power or virtue which went out from His sacred
person, but the effect in each case was de-
pendent on the response of faith. Where there
was no faith, there was no healing. According
to their faith it was done to them. Their faith
it was that made them whole. So it is with
our Lord's work of spiritual re-creation now
that He is at the right hand of God. The
restorative power, of which His sacraments
are the ordained channels, depends for its
efficacy in each case (not for its reality, I say,
but for its effect) on the response of faith.
Nor is it that the gift from without is God's,
and the response from within simply our own
act. No! Within us and without it is the
Spirit's action. From without He comes to
us with gifts of grace in all the organized
system of His Church : within us He works
to quicken our coldness, and to overcome our
wilfulness, till we exhibit the free and eager
Unity within the Church of England. 73
response of a converted heart to the offer of
God. And all the external supply of grace,
and all the inner response of faith, is but a
means to that which is the only end of all
religion— the renewal of the soul, of the whole
man into the image of Him who created it.
Brethren, need we be for ever in reactions?
Let us who believe profoundly in the sacra-
ments see to it that we never let them, so far as
lies in us, be spoken of, or treated, or used as
charms. Let us give no countenance, for in-
stance, to any use of baptism such as would
allow children, who are not in immediate danger
of death, to be baptized when there is no fair
prospect of their being brought up to under-
stand the meaning of their Christian vocation—
a practice, I believe, utterly contrary to funda-
mental Christian principles x. Let us see to it
that on our side there is no failure to preach the
necessity of the faith which alone justifies, and
of the converted will. Let us see to it that we
never allow in our thoughts or our language
any other measure of ecclesiastical success than
1 See app. note 13.
74 The Mission of the Church.
the promotion of holiness, the promotion of
goodness, in the actual lives of men. Let us
see to it we are not one-sided ; and then we
may have better hopes of reunion among our-
selves in our own Church of England. For to
St. Paul the three aspects of truth which, more
or less roughly, have been identified with three
parties in our Church, are not opposites but
correlatives. Three times he states the essence
of the true religion in antithesis to the exter-
nalism of the Judaists, and three times in dif-
ferent terms. 'Circumcision/ he cries three
times over1, 'is nothing, and uncircumcision is
nothing, but .... faith working by love.' Do
you ask what is the essence of true religion
viewed as the response of man to God ? It is
operative faith. And again ' . . . . the keeping
of the commandments of God/ Do you ask
what is true religion considered in its end and
fruit? It is actual conformity of our lives to
the divine requirements. But once again ' . . . .
a new creature.' Do you ask what is the
essence of true religion considered from the
1 Gal. v. 6 ; vi. 15 ; i Cor. vii. 19.
Unity within the Church of England. 75
side of God? It is that new creative act — the
new creative act of grace — which in all its
stages finds its expression in the Church, and
its instruments in the sacraments. The system
of grace, the response of faith, the result in
obedience — brethren, these are not opposites;
they are the correlatives the one of the other.
They are all of the essence of the one spiritual
religion.
IV.
Let me summarize the conclusions to which I
have endeavoured to lead you.
1. The Church of England has certainly a dog-
matic basis. Any one who would dissolve that
basis of dogma — for example by suggesting that
men should be admitted to the ministry who do
not in simplicity of heart hold the Creed — is
undermining thereby the basis of our religion
as a whole ; for our religion rests upon the
word of God, the self-revelation of God incarnate
in the person of Jesus Christ.
2. The Church of England insists upon a
limited amount of dogma, and beyond that
76 The Mission of the Church.
admits a considerable degree of divergence of
opinion. It seems to me very possible that this
is the ideal of Church government ; — that whilst
it was necessary there should be certain defini-
tions, and that the limits of Church communion
should be laid down up to a certain point,
possibly it was not desirable that exact definition
should proceed far. In matters of ordinary
civil government, we recognize that some ex-
ternal legislation is necessary, but over-legisla-
tion we think a bad thing. The same may be
the ideal in Church government also. In any
case it is the fact that the Church of England, in
Creed, Catechism, and Articles, fairly inter-
preted, makes certain dogmatic claims; and
beyond the point to which they extend ad-
mits of a considerable degree of divergent
opinion.
3. Beyond the point to which the dogmatic
requirement reaches we are still responsible ;
responsible for completeness of knowledge and
of teaching. Each one of us starts with certain
favourite doctrines and views of truth. There
are parts of the Bible we like to read ; parts
Unity within the Church of England. 7?
about which we feel uncomfortable. Starting
with such predilections we are, I say, respon-
sible for advancing, by prayer and efforts of
spiritual apprehension, till those parts of truth
least congenial to our nature are really appro-
priated. We are to put ourselves to school im-
partially at each of the books of the New
Testament. We are to grow to an intelligent
grasp upon the Catholic faith, and to remember
that we are the merest slaves if we are satisfied
with bare orthodoxy. What is actually pre-
scribed is but the starting-point for spiritual
apprehension.
4. The temper of theology ought to be the
temper of appreciation. A great deal in life
depends upon the temper of mind in which we
approach the opinions of others ; upon whether
we endeavour to see as much good in them as
possible, or, on the other hand, approach them
in the attitude of criticism, to find what we
can take hold of and find fault with. And of
these two tempers of mind there is no doubt
which is the more Christian ; for ' the wisdom
that is from above is first pure, then peaceable,
7 8 The Mission of the Church.
considerate, persuasible, full of mercy and good
fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace
by them that make peace.'
LECTURE III.
THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO INDE-
PENDENT AND HOSTILE OPINION.
' Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have
received mercy we faint not. But have renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness,
nor handling the word of God deceitfully ; but by mani-
festation of the truth commending ourselves to every
man's conscience in the sight of God.' — 2 Cor. iv. i, 2.
Reverend Father in God, my brethren of
the clergy and of the laity, — We have been
occupied in considering the divine mission of
the Church as a whole, and the doctrinal
basis on which we rest in the Church of
England in particular ; this afternoon we are
to go on to consider the relation in which we
stand towards independent or hostile forms of
thought in the world without us.
8o The Mission of the Church.
What in general is to be our attitude towards
opposition ? Is it to be in the main an attitude
of controversy? I answer, no. I remember
when I was being ordained priest, the late
Bishop of Oxford was interpreting to the
candidates for ordination St. Paul's advice to
Timothy and Titus — ' Let no man despise
thee/ ' let no man despise thy youth ' ; and
he said this did not mean that we were to
go about asserting ourselves everywhere, but
that it did mean that we were to be the sort
of men whom people could not despise. Now
this lesson for the individual priest applies also
to the Church. ' Let no man despise her.'
This does not mean that she is to be towards
all alien or independent societies in a perpetual
attitude of controversy and self-assertion ; but
that living by her own proper principles, she
is to be her true self, the sort of body, having
for her representatives the sort of men, that
people cannot despise. We must bear our
witness, teach the truth committed to us, and
do our duty ; and certain it is that by teaching
positively what we have to teach, and being
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 81
positively what God means us to be, we shall
find ourselves in the right relation towards
hostile or alien modes of thought.
I.
We are to teach positively what we have to
teach. On this some emphasis needs to be
laid. One often hears alarming things said
about the forces opposed to us. People get
into a condition of panic and express their
alarm by denunciation ; but in fact, our strength
lies in looking to our own household, and
setting it in order. For example, one some-
times hears alarming things said about the pro-
gress of the Roman Church in England. I do
not believe, in fact, that the Roman Church in
England, as judged by its own statistics, can
be said to advance. But, from time to time,
you hear no doubt of people becoming Roman
Catholics. Now when you inquire into such
cases, or have the circumstances brought under
your notice, you find generally that the cause
of such secessions, at least among the laity,
lies in our not having done our duty by them
G
82 The Mission of the Church.
in the Church -in the Church of the place
where they lived not having really shepherded
them. Either the penitent soul was not quite
frankly offered those opportunities of con-
fession which the Prayer-book would desire
that it should be given ; or the anxious and
inquiring spirit was not met with the advice
and solicitude which it had a right to ask for.
It was either that we clergy met some sug-
gested ' difficulty ' by ridicule or evasion, not
being ourselves suffciently equipped to give
the advice or counsel needed, or that they of
the laity had not, in fact, been instructed as
they ought to have been in the case of which
we have no kind of reason to be ashamed —
the case, positive and negative, for the Church
of England.
If you turn in another direction, and dwell
upon the rise and progress of Nonconformity,
there can be no question at all — it is, in fact,
hardly questioned — that it was due in the past,
not to any spirit of schism, but, at least in the
great majority of instances, to the fact that the
Anglican Church was not behaving as the true
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 83
mother of the people. You know this was
the case in the Church of Wales. Let her
become again but the true mother in Israel,
and we may be quite sure that gradually — not
at once, for evils of long standing are not
rectified at once— the children will come to
recognize their mother.
I say then that the prevalence of forms of
thought or belief alien or hostile to the Church
of England, is to lead us, first of all, to be
more true to our own principles, and to teach
with more positive plainness what the Church
commissions us to teach. We are not to be
denunciatory, but positive. But to be this
involves a good deal of study, thought, and
prayer. It is easy to indulge in vague denun-
ciations in the pulpit; and easy again to give
ourselves to general moral exhortation. Our
people are given too much vague denunciation
of what is, or is supposed to be, evil, and they
are too much exhorted. What they need is to
be taught positively, clearly, and scripturally.
I am sure there is a danger at present that
advance in the conduct of services, advance in
G 2
84 The Mission of the Church.
ritual, should outrun the real advance in posi-
tive teaching. No one who is wise would
undervalue reverent worship. I may remind
you of the sentence of Hooker : ' Duties of
religion performed by whole societies of men
ought to have in them, according to our power,
a sensible excellency correspondent to the
majesty of him whom we worship.' Who
could deny this ? But there is a danger that
solicitude about services should outrun solici-
tude about teaching, and that we should be
over-easily satisfied with 'getting a good ser-
vice.' Let me exemplify the lack of positive
teaching in the matter of Holy Communion.
An exhortation to Communion is introduced
constantly at the end of a sermon. But what
is the use of such reiterated parenthetic ex-
hortations ? People will be ready enough to
come to Communion if they understand what
its inestimable benefits are. But in fact they
do not understand the scope of the Eucharist
as communion, as sacrifice, as worship. If
they are to understand it, we must not be
satisfied with "a parenthetic reference, but must
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 85
supply thorough and systematic teaching. We
ought to devote entire sermons to particular sub-
jects, not selected in accordance with our own
proclivities, but following impartially the order
of teaching suggested by the Creed and Cate-
chism, always supporting the teaching of the
Church by constant and obvious reference to
Holy Scripture — ' teaching out of the Bible.'
To do this involves study on our part. It is
only by study that we can do our duty. And
it is all-important that our teaching should
be, not according to the partiality of the in-
dividual, but, fully and systematically, the whole
of what the Church puts into our hands to
teach. It has been one-sided teaching, or the
neglect of parts of the truth, that has been
in past history the excuse, if not the justifica-
tion, for schisms.
We are, then, not to be primarily con-
troversial ; but to be occupied in positive
teaching. And yet, without being controversial,
we shall find ourselves in opposition to alien
and hostile forms of thought of different sorts
in different directions. Thus we must be
86 The Mission of the Church.
combatants, for we are to ' try the spirits,' and
'even now in the world are there many anti-
christs.' Do not let us give way to effeminate
complaints of the forces now opposed to us,
talking about ' the good old times,' and con-
trasting them with the times in which we
live ; for, in fact, if there is one thing which
history makes more certain than another,
it is that there never were any good old
times. Think, for example, of the circum-
stances of the apostolic age ; think of the
Epistles of St. John to the Seven Churches,
or the Epistle of St. Jude, documents
which belong to the end of the apostolic
age and speak of the dangers which then
threatened the Church. Were those good
times? Or pass into the second century,
and study the struggle against various forms
of Gnosticism. Hear Celsus, from without,
saying that Christianity was already split
into so many sects that there was nothing
in common among them but their name l ; and
Tertullian, from within, regretting that ' the
1 Grig, c. Cels. iii. 12.
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 87
most faithful, the wisest, the most experienced
in the Church were for ever going over to the
wrong side1.' Were those good times? Or,
the age of the Councils; the age to which
we owe the Creeds, strong, clear, masterful
formulas? That was an age of wild contro-
versy ; and, amid the din of jarring voices,
people seemed hardly able to hear the notes
of certain truth at all. That was not a ' good
time.' How was it with the Middle Ages?
People talk about the 'ages of faith.' Cer-
tainly, there was more credulity, more readi-
ness to accept what was proclaimed on
authority, whether true or false; but, so far
as faith implies some moral effort, there is no
reason to think that there was more of it
than there is now. Read St. Bernard, and
you will see he did not look on his times as
good times. Once more, take the age of
Bishop Butler. ' It is come,' he says, ' I
know not how, to be taken for granted by
many persons, that Christianity is not so
much as a subject for inquiry; but that it is
1 De praescr. 3.
88 The Mission of the Church.
now, at length, discovered to be fictitious.
And, accordingly, they treat it as if in the
present age this were an agreed point among
all persons of discernment ; and nothing re-
mained but to set it up as a principal subject
of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of
reprisals, for its having so long interrupted
the pleasures of the world.' Were those good
times ? Or, take the generation immediately
behind our own. A good old churchman who
died not many years ago, used to protest, if
he heard men of a younger generation com-
plaining of the evils of the time : ' If you had
been born when I was, you would wronder
that there was any Church of England left.' It
is the fact that in every age we have to
struggle for a truth that seems hardly bestead.
II.
In this connection we ought to study more,
perhaps, than we do the message of the
Apocalypse. It is the book of the New Testa-
ment which conveys one particular lesson —
the lesson that the Bride of Christ is for
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 89
ever passing through those same phases of
fortune that Christ in His human life passed
through : the cause the same, the seeming
defeat the same, the same the passage through
the grave and gate of death to a joyful re-
surrection l. The Apocalypse lays down the
main conditions and principles of our per-
petual spiritual conflict. Under symbolical
forms we have set before us the great drama
and the dramatis personce. On one side, the
forces of God — God, Who sitteth upon His
throne, the sovereign ; and the Lamb, crucified
and triumphant, God's revelation to men of
the victory of meekness and self-sacrifice ; and
the seven Spirits before the throne, repre-
senting the universal, secret workings of God ;
and the Bride, the New Jerusalem, repre-
senting the true humanity, the true society,
which God has been gathering, and which
will be at last supreme. And, on the other
side, symbolical forms of evil : ' The old ser-
pent, called the Devil and Satan,' Satan
setting himself up in opposition to God; and
1 Rev. xi. 7-12.
go The Mission of the Church.
the great Beast, the beast of violence and per-
secution, the counterpart of the meek Lamb
who yields Himself to sacrifice, and through
sacrifice triumphs; and over against the seven
Spirits the second Beast, the beast who re-
presents the deceitfulness of sin, the spirit of
worldliness and false philosophy; and over
against the Bride, the New Jerusalem, the
woman, the harlot, representing false human
society, whose characteristics are gathered from
all corrupt forms of civilization with which the
Bible presents us, Sodom, Babylon, Egypt,
Rome — the persecuting empire of Rome — and^
Jerusalem, the apostate Church, rejecting
and crucifying Christ. These 'persons' of
the spiritual drama are exhibited to us in
conflict, and the spectacle of conflict passes
into that of the divine victory. And the
whole succession of spectacles teaches us the
conditions of our own present struggle — the
nature of the antagonism we are to expect,
and the weapons of conflict which we are to
use, and the issue which lies before us. Some-
times evil will present itself in the form of
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 91
persecution ; sometimes with ' the deceitfulness
of sin/ no longer as the lion, but as the
adder, in the subtle influences of worldliness
and disbelief. And the method of defence —
the method of the Lamb and His martyrs —
is to be the method of mingled loyalty and
meekness. We are to be like Christ, who
rode out because of the word of truth and
righteousness, but truth and righteousness
linked by meekness. Only through meekness
can we triumph ; truth and righteousness not
linked by meekness can never represent the
cause of Christ. In the spirit of Christ's
meekness we are to bear witness, to bear
witness (if it be so) even unto death, and in
the confidence of His resurrection to look for-
ward to the certain issue. For the kingdoms of
the world are to become the kingdom of the Lord
and of His Christ. Through the grave and gate
of death the Church passes to her triumph.
III.
We are to bear our witness, then, as Church-
men, in the face of alien and hostile forms of
92 The Mission of the Church.
thought. Let us consider this — to-day only as
concerns our witness to theological truth; for
the consideration of our moral witness we will
reserve for to-morrow — first as it affects us at
home, and secondly with reference to the
mission field. First, as it affects us at home.
And whilst it is impossible to survey in any
sense the whole field, I would call your atten-
tion to four points on which, it seems to me, we
are especially called to maintain our witness
at the present crisis of thought.
i. We are to bear witness to the principle of
faith. People in many directions are disposed
to disparage faith, and to complain of its
being required of them. The complaint is in
the air : it influences men almost without their
knowing it. They. have an idea that it is 'un-
reasonable to believe what cannot be proved.'
It is not unreasonable. And in vindicating the
principle of faith it is of great importance that it
should be set in antithesis not to reason but to
sight. The popular antithesis of faith and reason
is a very dangerous one, and it is unscriptural.
In the New Testament faith is opposed always
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 93
to sight, never to reason ; and the difference is
significant. ' Faith is the evidence (or test) of
things not seen.' Faith is the faculty in us by
which we pass out beyond present experience,
and lay hold upon eternal realities and grounds
of confidence.
But this faculty for going beyond present
experience is a faculty of our reason. It is
in order to be rational — that is, in order to give
rational account of the world and our own
nature, in order to realize all that our nature
is capable of — it is in order to be rational that
we travel beyond what we can see and
are brought, more or less fully, into contact
with God and eternity.
The principle of faith is brought into exercise
to some extent in all human life and knowledge.
Thus the ultimate postulates and principles
on which physical science depends — such as
the unity of all things, the universality of law,
the persistence of force — these are not truths
that can be proved. They are assumptions
that science is bound to make *. Thus there is
1 See app. note 14.
94 The Mission of the Church,
something akin to faith necessary in the very
beginnings of scientific inquiry. But its neces-
sity is much more apparent in social relations.
Human life is based on the principle of faith.
You must go far beyond what you can prove
as to people's trustworthiness ; you must trust
the instinct of sonship and brotherhood. And
speaking generally you find your trust justified.
On the whole, 'according to our faith, so is it
done to us.' The man who goes furthest in
believing in humanity is the man who draws
most out of it, whilst the most sceptical and
cynical is most often deceived. In the sphere
of personal morality the requirement of faith
is still more apparent. If we would be moral
we must throw ourselves upon the right, in
the supreme confidence that what ought to be
can be. And faith is only finding its true
home and justification when it goes one step
further on and realizes its personal relation to
God. For ' unto Thyself, O God, hast thou
made us, and unquiet is our heart until it rest
on Thee.' Still our faith is rational. It is not
without reason that we believe. God has not
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 95
left Himself without witness in nature and
conscience ; still more in Jesus Christ. But
witness is not demonstration. We need the
venture of faith to 'see him who is invisible.'
Our Lord develops this faculty in His dis-
ciples—our Lord who is the Master of our true
humanity. He, I say, whilst giving the disciples
grounds for believing in Himself, and in the
Father through Him, does obviously encourage
and develop in them the faculty of faith. We
then are not to be ashamed of it, or apolo-
gize for it, as if it were unreasonable. Nor,
inasmuch as it is the noblest of our faculties,
shall we be surprised if its exercise is some-
times difficult. It is hard, as it is supremely
noble, to ' endure as seeing him who is
invisible.' It would not be worth all it is
worth if it was not often difficult to be-
lieve. Nor is it, any more than any other
truly human faculty, a power which we can
exercise without God's help. ' No man can say
(or continue to say) that Jesus is Lord but by
the Holy Ghost.' Faith is difficult then, and a
habit which requires divine assistance; but it
96 TJie Mission of the Church.
is rational. It is rational, I say, because it and it
alone enables us to give a rational account of all
the facts of the world, of all that science and
history discloses, and also of all that lies hid,
half realized, half concealed, in the depths of
our own being ; of all that spiritual men have
shown our humanity to be capable of in son-
ship to God. Faith enables us to move through
the whole world of nature and of man as those
who have the clue to its secrets; who are at
home in it ; who are ' not afraid of any evil
tidings, for their heart standeth fast, trusting in
the Lord.' Indeed the spirit of Christian son-
ship is the only true rationality.
2. We are to bear witness to the Being of
God, and that in an intellectual atmosphere
which, under the influence of a school of
scientific enquirers, exhibits some tendency
towards Agnosticism— that is, the denial that
we can know of the existence of God at all,
or anything about Him. We maintain, then,
in the face of this tendency, that we have
grounds for knowing — in part knowing, and in
part believing — that God is, and what He is.
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 97
Ought it to distress us that we should find
ourselves confidently affirming what the repre-
sentatives of physical science — that is, the re-
presentatives of the branches of knowledge
in which the greatest recent advances have
been made— not seldom deny? I answer, on
the whole, no : in part because the agnosticism
of men of science is exaggerated; and when
they are, as very many of them are, earnest
believers, their freedom in the facts of science
is not one whit diminished by their Chris-
tian faith. In part because it is a fact con-
spicuous in the history of mankind that, whereas
the representatives of great intellectual move-
ments at different epochs have interpreted truly
the movement which they represented in itself,
they have been strangely blind to the place
which it was destined to hold in the whole of
human knowledge or human life.
Thus the great Greek philosophers inter-
preted truly Greek institutions, and estimated
aright their positive value, but were blind in
thinking these institutions final and the last
word of social progress in the world. The re-
H
98 The Mission of the Church.
preservatives of the Roman empire, again, knew
the real dignity and value of that empire, but
were blind to the relative place it would hold
by the side of its despised contemporary the
Christian Church. The Reformers, once again,
had real truth on their side ; there were real
principles which they were vindicating, real
abuses against which they were protesting;
but how extraordinarily blind, speaking gener-
ally, were the Reformers to the sum of
positive religious forces with which they had
to reckon. What a surprise to them would the
religious history have been which links their
time with ours ! They were as blind surely to
the forces of Catholicism as were the Deists of
the last century to the real if dormant strength
of supernatural Christianity. Once again, and
for the last time, the Radical reformers of the
earlier part of this century set their minds on
certain reforms which are now practically
accomplished. They estimated rightly the
necessity and the possibility of the reforms they
advocated ; but how short-sighted they were as
to the good that would be effected in human
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 99
life as a whole by the mere external enfranchise-
ment of individual action.
I learn then from past experience that I must
attend with great respect to the positive teaching
in their own department of any body of men
who represent with tolerable unanimity a great
advance in knowledge or power. I must attend
with great respect to the scientific teaching of
scientific men. But I shall not anticipate that
representatives of one particular movement are
likely to estimate rightly the place it will take
in the whole of human life. Thus I shall
not listen with the same respect to the
representatives of science when they pass from
teaching science to denouncing theology or
depreciating religion. Those inside a movement
cannot generally see sufficiently clearly what
lies outside it. Those whose interests are less
specialized are more likely to estimate the
place it will take in the whole of human life.
We must regret, I think, that theologians
were unduly slow to recognize the vast amount
of evidence on which reposes the scientific
theory of evolution through natural selection.
H 2
ioo The Mission of the Church.
But in proportion as people lose their fear of it
and come to accept it, they will surely perceive
that the claim made for it by agnosticism, the
claim that it enables us to account for the
development of the world without postulating
throughout the action of mind, is an altogether
exaggerated claim ; it is altogether to over-
estimate the function of natural selection *.
Science has, in fact, taught us a great deal
as to the method of creation — how continuous it
has been, how gradual, how even tentative — but
it has done nothing at all to explain the origin
of force, of matter, of life, nothing at all to
dissolve the conviction which belongs to the
rational mind of man, that this world of uni-
versal order and law and beauty, this world
which ' while it works as a machine also sleeps as
a picture,' is the work of mind and spirit like
ours — mind and spirit which is the vast whole of
which ours is but the tiny product or reflection.
3. We are to maintain a historical religion —
a historical revelation of God in Christ; and
this in face of a destructive criticism.
1 See app. note 15.
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 101
In the Church Congress in this diocese last
year you had a discussion of the Church's gains
from Biblical criticism. The discussion dealt
almost entirely with criticism as applied to the Old
Testament. Now criticism as applied to the Old
Testament presents us at present with a great
many unsolved problems and some fairly certain
conclusions which seem to demand rather unex-
pected changes in our conception of the literary
character of some of the books, and of the pro-
cess by which they took their present shape.
That subject was dealt with from this place at
large and very ably by Professor Kirkpatrick
last year1. We need not suppose, as his
lectures sufficiently indicate, that the change
of position ultimately required of us will be
such as the extremists among critics would
desire. The existing evidence in fact points
in two directions. If, on the one hand, literary
analysis emphasizes the composite character
of the 'books of Moses,' and historical enquiry
enforces the belief that the Mosaic law was
1 The Divine Library of the Old Testament (Macmillan,
1891).
io2 The Mission of the ChurcJi.
the result of a gradual process of development
and centralization ; on the other hand, oriental
archaeology discloses the existence of the know-
ledge of writing, and considerable development
of literary skill, both in Palestine and Egypt, a
century before the Exodus. Such discoveries as
those at Tel-el-amarna make it easy to suppose
that some written law and written records go
back among the Jews to the period of Moses \
Certain changes, however, will be required of
us. We must remember, as St. Augustine has
expressed it, that, if it be wronging the Old
Testament to deny that it comes from the same
God as the New, on the other hand, it is
wronging the New Testament if the Old is
placed on a level with it. The Old Testament
represents the gradual method by which God
led men on, 'in many parts and many manners'
through a process of education preparing the
way for Christ. The meaning of the Old
1 On this subject, and on the questions connected with
Old Testament criticism generally, I have endeavoured
to speak more at length in Lux Mundi (John Murra}-,
12th ed. 1891), pp. 247 ff. and Pref. to loth ed.
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 103
Testament is to be sought in the partial witness
which each book bears to the central truth of
the Incarnation.
Now it seems to me unfortunate that the
discussions at your Church Congress dealt so
disproportionately with the Old Testament.
For surely, when we are thinking of our
' gains from Biblical criticism/ our attention is
more naturally directed in the first instance
to the New Testament. Surely, it is here
that our gains are most conspicuous. Those
who are alarmed at the tendencies of Old Testa-
ment criticism, sometimes ask where it will stop,
whether it will not go on to the New Testa-
ment. But, in fact, such a question shows an
ignorance of the situation. Criticism began
with the New at least as soon as with the Old
Testament. The New Testament documents
have been sifted by the most thorough criticism
which can be conceived ; and, so far from
having been invalidated, they stand in a stronger
position than that in which they stood fifty
years ago, in proportion as the examination has
been more thorough.
104 The Mission of the Church.
Trace back the Synoptic Gospels to the two
primitive documents which so many critics
postulate — the original collection of discourses
represented in St. Matthew, and the original
narrative of events represented in St. Mark's
Gospel. When }-ou consider the Christ de-
picted in these, do you find that you have got
any nearer to a merely ' natural ' or human
Christ, to one who by gradual accretion was
raised into a supernatural figure ? No : the
fundamental narrative of events is permeated by
miracles which resist all attempts to explain
them away ; and the original collection of dis-
courses represents in all its unmistakable force
the strictly divine claim of our Lord. In-
vestigation, again, shows us at the very roots
of St. Paul's teaching the doctrine of the Incar-
nation, as a matter not in dispute, any more
than the fact of the resurrection, between him
and the Judaizers. Investigation once again
leaves the strength of the evidence on the side of
the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. And, as
Professor Sanday has very recently said, 'we
cannot help being reminded that scarcely one of
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 105
the discoveries of recent years has not had for
its tendency to bring back the course of criticism
into paths nearer to those marked out by
ancient tradition V Certainly historical evi-
dence is not generally demonstrative, and the
historical title-deeds of our faith do not appear
to be intended to force conviction upon any
man's mind ; but they do support it and justify
it. I am sure that I am within the mark in
saying that in view of recent criticism of the
New Testament, it is those who deny and not
those that affirm the faith of the Church who
do violence to the evidence 2.
There are other issues, even in the new
Testament, which are secondary and less
decisive. But in regard to the central facts
on which our historical religion depends, the
historical witness stands with unimpeachable
strength. We are not then to go about de-
crying criticism. We are to invite criticism
to do all it can, and ask only for justice.
1 See Tzvo Present Day Questions ( Longmans, 1892), p. 37.
2 See this argument at greater length in Bampton
Lectures, 1891 (Murray), Lect. III.
io6 The Mission of the Church.
We must remember further that our his-
torical religion — our religion which looks back
to a disclosure of God, through a historical in-
carnation, in the person of Jesus Christ — gives
us another great advantage as rational men.
The doctrine of the triune being of God,
which is unmistakably involved in our Lord's
language about His relation to the Father and
the Holy Ghost — this doctrine of the triune
being enables us to maintain a rational Theism.
Theism requires us to think of God as an
independent, eternal, spiritual Being. Indeed
there is an end to the humility or reality of
religion if God is thought to depend upon us
in order to have some one to know and to love.
But you cannot think of an independent, eternal,
spiritual life in God, if the being of God is
blank and monotonous unity. The life of spirit,
the life of will and knowledge and love, involves
relationship. For love there must be a lover
and a loved ; for thought there must be a
thinker and an object of thought ; for fruitful
will there must be the perpetual passage of
will into effect. And it is thus the doctrine
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 107
of the Trinity, though we could not have in-
vented or discovered it for ourselves, which
makes our thought of God rational and real,
because it shows us God not in isolation, but
in perpetual fellowship within Himself. The
eternal being of the Father passes out into
its adequate self-expression in the eternal Word
or Son; and the Father in the Son knows
Himself and loves Himself; and the fellow-
ship of the Father and the Son finds its per-
fection in the Holy Ghost who is the eternal
product and joy of both.
We are to maintain, then, the historical
Christ as the disclosure of God to us, and as
the foundation of an intelligible Theism x.
4. Lastly, have we not need to maintain ' the
Gospel' in view of reactions against what is
called ' old-fashioned Evangelical Christianity ? '
This old-fashioned Evangelicalism, dealt almost
exclusively with the doctrine of atonement and
the vicarious aspects of Christianity. And
these were preached in a way that did violence
to the moral sense of mankind. There has
1 See Bampton Lectures, Lect. V.
io8 The Mission of the Church.
come, and rightly, a great reaction ; but it
appears to be imagined in some quarters
that we are almost to abandon the preaching of
the doctrine of atonement and of the vicarious
aspect of Christianity, confining ourselves to
the doctrine of the Incarnation and its exten-
sion in the sacraments of the Church. Now
nothing that has taken such hold of the human
heart as the doctrine of atonement could ever
pass into oblivion. It may have been put
into undue prominence, and we must rectify
the balance ; but no more. There are two
elements in the Gospel : there is first, Christ
for us — our example, our sacrifice, God's
simple gift to us from outside ; and, secondly,
Christ in us, renewing our lives inwardly by
His Spirit into union with His own.
Now it is not a question of whether we
shall preach the one or the other of these
elements in the Gospel. If we would be true
to the New Testament, we must preach and
hold them both. For it is Christ in us that
makes intelligible Christ for us; and it is
Christ for us who prepares the way for Christ
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 109
in us. It is Christ for us in awful solitude
' treading the wine-press alone ' who lives the
true human life and offers the perfect human
sacrifice to the divine righteousness. This is
God's gift to us which, in utter repudiation of
any merits of our own, we are simply to accept
in faith. But Christ can thus act 'for us'
because He proceeds to act ' in us.' His
Spirit comes forth out of His ascended and
glorified manhood and links us on to Him ;
henceforth it is Christ in us imparting His
life to us and identifying us with Himself. If
then we are to bear a complete witness, if we
are to appeal to the consciences of men both
as they desire pardon for sin and as they desire
actual righteousness, we shall not preach one
or other of these elements in the Gospel, but
the truth of both.
Here are four ways in which our witness
is required — as to the principle of faith : as
to the being of God : as to His revelation of
Himself in the historical person of Jesus Christ
and the events of His human life : as to the
full meaning of the Gospel which is embodied
no The Mission of the Church.
in Christ's person, our sacrifice as well as our
example and our new life.
IV.
I have left myself but little time to speak of
the witness which the Church must bear abroad
among the heathen. It is the same witness but
under different conditions — in face of Hindu,
Buddhist, Mohammedan forms of thought, in
India, China, Japan, and the region of the
Turkish Empire lost to the Church, and in face
of less developed forms of belief among less
civilized tribes. Not nearly half of the world,
we must remember, is yet Christian. It is the
catholic mission and claim of the Church that
we are called upon to vindicate. This means
that Christ is adequate for all races, and can
satisfy all forms of human need. Already in the
history of Christianity it has appeared how each
fresh race as it has been brought within the
Church, has both itself found its sanctification
there, and also has brought out some fresh
aspect of the full meaning of Christ. It was
but a very small part of Christianity which
Its relation to Independent Opinion, nt
emerged in the purely Jewish Church. The
Greek race, with its unique powers of intellect,
had for its vocation to bring out the treasures of
wisdom which lay hid in Christ. To it in the
main we owe our theology. The Roman race,
with its wonderful powers of discipline and or-
ganization, built up the mediaeval Papacy, that
glorious witness to the governing and disci-
plining forces of Christianity. The Teutonic
race has surely taught the world much that it
would not otherwise have known, of the power
of Christianity in consecrating individual char-
acter. And there still remain great and rich
gifts for consecration ; the subtilty of the
Hindus, the patience of the Chinese, the
geniality and gentleness of the Japanese. Here
are great qualities not yet, except in small
measure, sanctified in Christ; and we shall not
see the full glory of Christianity till these alien
races are brought inside the circle of the
Church, to bring unsuspected treasures of
wisdom and beauties of character out of the same
old and unchanging creed.
Such considerations may fire our imagin-
H2 The Mission of the Church.
ations : but, prior to them and more simply
cogent there lies upon us the injunction of
Christ — 'Go ye into all the world,' 'make dis-
ciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost.5
Brethren, here then is our paramount duty.
It is a shame how long, to how wide an extent,
with what disastrous results, we have forgotten
it. We are to proclaim Christianity as super-
seding all other religions by a method not so
much of exclusion as of inclusion. For Christ
' the light which lighteneth every man/ the
Word in every man's heart, has left Himself
nowhere, in no religion, without witness. All
religions contain more or less considerable
elements of truth. And Christianity, I say,
supersedes other religions by including the
elements of truth which belong to each in a
vaster and completer whole. It supersedes them
as daylight supersedes twilight; aye, makes
the twilight by comparison to be as the night.
In part then it is by direct opposition to what
is positively evil, in part by sympathetic re-
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 113
cognition of the elements of truth in alien
systems, that we have to bear our witness in
heathen countries.
And when we think of it, do we not, many
of us, find ourselves in the wrong in this
matter? Do we not need to have it more
on our consciences, and in our prayers, to
take more pains to interest our parishioners
in some particular mission and to see that
they know all about it? Nay more; do we
not need to ask ourselves whether it may not
be our own privilege to offer ourselves for
foreign mission work ? There can be no
question that there are a vast number of divine
vocations to this work missed, simply because
people never trouble themselves to ask whether
they may not themselves be called upon to do
it. Can I then show cause why I should not
be a missionary ?
Brethren, in the Apocalypse there is set
before us the picture of the perfected Church.
It is completely catholic — 'a great multitude
which no man could number, of all nations and
i
U4 The Mission of the Church.
kindreds and people and tongues'; it is abso-
lutely one — 'the city that lieth four-square/
and from within its walls goes up the harmony
of perfected praise. Again, it is wholly pure;
the Bride of Christ, in white raiment, the
perfected righteousnesses of the saints. Lastly
it is triumphant and acknowledged of all,
as 'the kings of the earth bring their glory
and honour into it.' Catholic, one, pure,
triumphant — we shall behold her, but not now;
we shall see her, but not nigh. It is the vision
of heaven, but it is the hope of earth. Mean-
while the vision is for an appointed time ; and
though it tarry we are to wait for it and to
have it constantly in view. It is certain, that
joy towards which we move. There is certain
triumph before the cause of Christ. Conscious
of this, we are to bear our witness, to suffer and
to endure. It is hard to go on patiently to the
end of life without letting our ideal fade and
vanish ; and yet it is herein that Christianity lies.
And for such as endure, as bear their witness
to truth faithfully and fully in suffering and
amidst opposition to the end, we know the re-
Its relation to Independent Opinion. 115
ward. ' Ye are they who have continued with
me in my temptations ; and inasmuch as my
Father appointed a kingdom unto me, I appoint
unto you to eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom ; and ye shall sit on thrones, judging
the twelve tribes of Israel1.'
1 St. Luke xxii. 29, 30.
I 2
LECTURE IV.
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN SOCIETY.
' For the which cause I put thee in remembrance that
thou stir up (stir into flame) the gift of God, which is in
thee through the laying on of my hands. For God gave
us not a spirit of fearfulness ; but of power and love, and
discipline.' — 2 Tim. i. 6, 7 [R.V.].
Reverend Father in God, my brethren of the
clergy, and of the laity, — We are to consider
the Mission of the Church in Society : its
mission to teach men moral and social prin-
ciples by which they are to live according to
the mind of Christ.
I.
If you read consecutively the Pastoral Epistles,
you will be struck with the extent to which St.
Paul conceives it to be the function of Timothy
The Mission of the Church in Society. 117
and Titus to be moral rulers. And this kingly
office in the Church means not only, or chiefly,
that we are to teach people to be true to their
consciences, but even more, that we are to inform
their consciences. For the cause of our un-
satisfactory moral condition is not only that men
do not do what they know to be right, but that
they have so imperfect a moral ideal. God has
endowed men with a perception, more or less
instinctive, that they must do the right. But
their knowledge of what the right is — their
' conscientia ' — is not instinctive. It requires in-
forming. Thus in fact you find infinite variety
in the moral standards of mankind : and that
because God has left it as the responsibility
of men to inform their consciences according
to the different degrees of opportunity which
in different ages He has given them.
Now we Christians have a perfect standard
set before us. We have the opportunities of
thorough moral knowledge. Thus our respon-
sibility as Christians is to keep our own con-
sciences enlightened ; and our responsibility
as teachers is to enlighten the consciences of
n8 The Mission of the Church.
others. But this leaves us a great deal to
do. What strikes us, I repeat, in nominally
Christian society is not so much that people do
not follow their consciences, as that they are
so frequently deficient in moral knowledge, and
more than this, blind to the responsibility they
are under of keeping their consciences respon-
sive to the word of God.
When we look back over history we wonder
at the slackness of men's consciences in the
past on points which seem to us clear enough.
We examine the instruments of torture in some
old house of the Inquisition, and marvel how
men could ever have been so blind to the
spirit of Christianity as to tolerate religious
persecution at all, or, in particular, such methods
of persecution. Or, to come to times nearer
our own, we profess the greatest astonishment
that members of our Houses of Parliament
should have allowed themselves to accept bribes
almost without concealment, as in fact the
history of the last century records that they
did. Or we read the history of the Church
in Wales, in the sadly recent days when bishops
The Mission of the Church in Society. 119
were constantly non-resident, and we can hardly
conceive how such a standard of conscience as
to spiritual duties could ever have prevailed.
We wonder at the blindness of the consciences
of men in past times ; but we forget that, unless
we are very careful, we are in danger of exactly
the same blindness, and that perhaps on points
to which the mediaeval conscience or the con-
science of the past century was more sensitive
than ours. At any rate it is a constant law of
moral deterioration, as applicable to ourselves as
to men of other ages, that conscience sinks to
the level of practice.
It is not pleasant to mention particular points
on which our conscience to-day seems to need
re-adjustment to the standard of Christ, but I
can hardly evade the necessity. Thus it seems
to me a conspicuous instance of moral blindness,
that people should fail to see that in investing
their money they make themselves — within
reasonable limits, but really — responsible for the
use to which their money is put : that to put one's
money, or allow it to be put, into any ' concern '
without enquiry into the moral or social
1 20 The Mission of the Church.
tendency of the concern, is to serve mammon
at the expense of Christ. We cannot, in fact,
hedge off any department of our life, and conduct
it on what we call ' purely commercial principles '
without reference to moral considerations. The
' mammon of unrighteousness,' the money that has
been too long appropriated to unrighteous uses,
has to be used by the servant of Christ to make
to himself friends for eternity — in view therefore
of eternal interests. In buying and selling, as
in other respects, we are to ' seek first the king-
dom of God.' And no one can tell what a dif-
ference it would make in the commercial world
if it was known that the ears of Christians were
alert to the calls of justice — that they would at
once recognize it as their duty to refuse their
support to any business the conduct of which
involved oppression or unfairness.
Let me take quite a different instance. How
extraordinarily blind are multitudes of Church
people, in the highest not one whit less than
in the lowest classes, to their responsibility
for the religious education of their children, for
seeing that their children really are instructed
The Mission of the Church in Society. 121
in those matters which form the contents of
the Church Catechism, and in Holy Scripture.
It would not be hard to multiply instances
of a defective conscience ; but it is enough
to notice these two, in which we seem to have
fallen below the standard of past Christian
ages. Who, I ask, could read the New
Testament for the first time and imagine
that Christian people, the people who profess
to follow the teaching contained in it, could
be indifferent on the points which I have
mentioned ?
II. '
How then and on what authority are we to
seek to instruct men's consciences on the
Christian moral law ? That law has, in prin-
ciple, been laid down for us by our Lord in the
Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, and the
New Testament is full of comments on this
moral law of Christ. Further, you find that the
Church was plainly invested by our Lord with
the power of re-applying, from age to age, this
moral law to the varying needs and circum-
122
The Mission of the Church.
stances of different generations. In other
words, our Lord endowed the Church with the
power of binding and loosing. He gave this
power to the Church in the person of the
representative apostle Peter; He recognized it
also in the community as a whole1. In what
different senses the power inheres in the Church
and in the apostolic ministry we are not now
concerned to enquire. We can be satisfied with
the fact which lies plainly on the surface of
Holy Scripture : the Church was endowed with
this power of binding and loosing.
And there is no. doubt what this means,
because binding and loosing were perfectly
well-known terms in our Lord's day. They
were terms used of the Rabbis or Jewish
masters. To bind was to prohibit a thing; to
loose was to allow a thing. A strict Rabbi was
said to ' bind,' or forbid, what a Rabbi of a laxer
school would ' loose ' or allow 2.
Our Lord then endowed the Church with
1 St. Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 18.
2 See Edersheim,/£S«s the Messiah (Longmans, 2nd ed.),
ii. p. 85.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 123
this legislative and judicial power to bind and
loose; and though, no doubt, behind all mis-
takes of the Church there lies the corrective
justice of God, which He never can surrender
out of His own hands, yet the Church was
intended to exercise this power, and that with
a spiritual or supernatural sanction. 'What-
soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.' In a word, the
Church in every age is to apply or re-apply with
a spiritual or supernatural sanction the religious
and moral truth which our Lord intended to be
for all time the basis of her life.
On the basis of this moral legislation, there
was to be a moral discipline which is expressed
in the absolving and retaining of sins1. The
Church was to decide who could and who could
not be admitted to baptism, to that ' baptism for
the remission of sins,' which is the primary
absolution. And when persons who had been
baptized were guilty of notorious breaches of
the Christian law, they were to be excluded
1 St. John xx. 23.
124 The Mission of the Church.
from the privilege of the Christian society-
there was to be a ' retaining ' of their sins ; and
again, when the Church was satisfied of their
repentance; a re-admission to the Christian
status, or a renewed ' absolution.' So the Church
was to exercise a disciplinary authority over
her members. We can see examples of this
authority in exercise plainly enough in the
New Testament. Thus in the fifteenth chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles we have an
instance of how the Church exercised the
binding and loosing power when circumstances
required it, 'loosing' the gentile converts
on the question of circumcision, whilst she
' bound ' them on certain other points, on the
eating of things strangled and things offered
to idols ; and on a sin conspicuously associated
with idolatry, the sin of fornication. Or again
we see the disciplinary authority applied to a
person in the case of the incestuous man at
Corinth. The Corinthian Christians, in what
we may call the spirit of weak good-nature, were
disposed to tolerate the sinner and his sin in
their society. St. Paul sternly rebukes them.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 125
He tells them that while it is not the Christian
function to 'judge those that are without/ they
were bound to exercise judgment upon those
within. Thus he requires them to exclude the
offender from the Christian communion, until—
as we seem to find in the Second Epistle — he
had exhibited marks of true repentance; and
then, ' lest he be swallowed up with over-much
sorrow,' he desires him to be received back, and
he himself admits him. ' To whom ye forgive
anything, I forgive also : for if I forgave any-
thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes
forgave I it in the person of Christ1.' The
Christian society, then, is constantly to enun-
ciate and re-apply the moral law, and to exercise
discipline on the basis of this law; to exclude
from fellowship those who are notoriously living
in violation of it, and to re-admit them to fellow-
ship when they again show themselves worthy
of it.
III.
How is it that such obvious principles of the
Christian society have fallen into abeyance ?
1 i Cor. v; 2 Cor. ii. 5-11.
126 The Mission of the Church.
I would point to two main causes of this
disorder.
i. The first is to be sought in the history of
penitential discipline in the middle ages. At
first this discipline had been exercised in part
publicly, in part privately; later on, for suffi-
ciently obvious reasons, it became generally
private. Still later, this private confession was
made compulsory after having been voluntary
for many centuries. In being made compulsory,
its moral level was necessarily lowered. As a
result of this lowering of the moral level of
penitence, casuistry — which means the appli-
cation of the general moral law to particular
cases— came to be almost entirely what it ought
not to have been — a negative thing ; not an
enunciation of how Christ would have men act,
or of what Christians ought to do ; but rather
an attempt to minimize the moral requirement,
to reduce it to its low-est possible terms, to find
the easiest possible basis on which the priest
could give absolution to the penitent. It was
but a step from this that casuistry should become,
what the casuistry of the Jesuits had in great
The Mission of the Church in Society. 127
measure become when Pascal exposed it in his
incomparable Lettres Provinciates, an evasion of
the plain moral requirement of God in order to
keep slack consciences within the communion
of the Church.
2. But the cause of the decay of moral disci-
pline in our own Church has been a different one
— the peculiar relation in which the Church
stands to the State, a relation which demands
a word of explanation.
As you look at the New Testament, you
see, without doubt, that the Church and the
State are both divine institutions. The minis-
ters of State are called God's ministers1, as
the ministers of the Church are called God's
ministers. Both are divine institutions, but they
exist on different planes, and for different
objects ; the State to be the minister of justice
in the society of men generally; the Church
to be the minister to the sons of faith of
the fuller and deeper blessings included in
Christ's redemption.
Subsequent history has shown how difficult
1 Rom. xiii. 1-6.
i28 The Mission of the Church.
is the adjustment of the relations of these two
societies. At first they were obviously inde-
pendent ; and Christians had no doubt at all
about the duty of recognizing that the powers
of civil society, ' pagan ' as it was, were ordained
of God. On the other hand, civil society—
that is, the Roman Empire — came to look sus-
piciously upon the Christian Church, an 'im-
perium in imperio' as it seemed to be, and in
the age of persecution attempted to stamp
it out by mere violence. We know how that
attempt failed. The tables were turned. Later
on, in the great days of the Papacy, we become
witnesses of the rival attempt to reduce the
State into subordination to the Church. Again
the attempt failed. The obvious logic of facts
was too much for the theory of the papal
sovereignty on which it was based. There
follows another attempt,, which had its chief
expression in England, and especially at the
period of the Reformation, the attempt to
regard the Church and the State as in fact
the same society in different aspects. Such a
theory has found its noblest expression in the
The Mission of the Church in Society. 129
pages of Hooker. At bottom it rests upon
the assumption that, inasmuch as the State is
committed to Christian principles, the Church
can go far towards merging herself in the
State, and, in great measure, allow her adminis-
trative independence to be taken from her in
return for national position.
It was a noble ideal; but an ideal on which
subsequent events have cast a sinister light.
To how small an extent can it be said that
the English monarchy or nation has held
itself bound by the principles of the Church.
We live now under democratic influences.
The law of the State depends on the will of
the majority of the nation. What likelihood is
there that the will of the majority should
submit itself to the law of Christ? And if it
be unlikely, what right had the Church to
hamper her liberty to express and enforce by
moral discipline on her own members the
unchanging law of Christ ?
In fact, it has come about that the English
State law, as for example by the Divorce Act,
has traversed the law of Christ. And the
K
130 The Mission of the Church.
calamitous thing is this — that in nominally
Christian society, there is extraordinarily little
apprehension of the fact that, as Christians, men
are under another law besides the law of the
State. They are citizens, and as citizens they
are bound to obey the State law in what
belongs to State law ; but they are Christians
also, and as Christians they are bound to obey
another law, the law of the Church ; and it is no
excuse for them, as Christians, that the law of the
State does not enforce the law of Christ. They
will be judged as Christians by the Christian law.
It is, then, at the present moment one main
duty of the English Church to recall to the
mind of her own members, and so to the minds
of others, that there is an authority committed
to her which is fundamentally independent of
the functions and authority of the State ; that,
in the last issue, the duty of teaching and
guarding the principles of Christian doctrine,
discipline, and worship, was committed by
Christ to one divine society, the Church ; and
not to that other divine society, with separate
functions, the State.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 131
IV.
In view of the situation and perils which
I have now described, we have, I think, two
obvious duties over and above the general re-
assertion of the ecclesiastical principle : —
i. We must get people to recognize the
principle of Christian moral discipline. It is a
plain fact, that Christ enunciated unchanging
moral principles. The laws of men, the opinions
of society, the policies of statesmen, all may
change ; but the mind of Christ for His dis-
ciples does not change. He is 'the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' And it is by
the principles which He once for all enunciated
that He will judge the world. We have to
get men to recognize this. And in proportion
as this is recognized, will there arise the possi-
bility of legitimate Christian discipline. This
revival of Christian discipline on the basis of the
moral law is a hard thing to accomplish — nay,
it may appear impossible, but diligent voluntary
effort can, I believe, accomplish it. Think what
voluntary effort has done in the last fifty
K 2
132 The Mission of the Church.
years in the revival of theology. Whether
you approve or do not approve of the Trac-
tarian revival you can learn one great lesson
from it; you can learn the almost boundless
power of a voluntary combination of Christian
men profoundly in earnest. The circumstances
looked hopeless enough for the revival of de-
finite Church doctrine when the Tractarians
began their work; but, as a matter of fact,
that voluntary combination has accomplished
to a surprising degree and in spite of crushing
disasters what it desired. Dr. Pusey in his
old age used to look back on the history of
his life, with all its vicissitudes, and sum up
his experience in the words of the Psalmist :
'Thanks be to God that he hath not cast
out my prayer, nor turned his mercy from
me.' Now we want a similar sort of volun-
tary combination for the assertion of the moral
law of Christianity, and the restoration of that
discipline, which is, I believe, a necessary part
of the healthy life of any Christian society.
No Christian society can be healthy unless
there is some obvious means by which those
The Mission of the Church in Society. 133
acting in open defiance of Christian law shall
forfeit, not the privileges of citizenship, but
the privileges of Christian communion.
2. In order to this end we need to formu-
late anew, to apply anew, Christian morality:
for the principles which by word and example
our Lord laid down for His Church need
constant re-application in view of new cir-
cumstances. We want a new casuistry, which
will not be a statement of the minimum re-
quirement, but an exposition of how Chris-
tians ought to act in the different departments
of social life. This new casuistry will need
to be formulated by voluntary effort in the
first place, and might afterwards be taken
into consideration by the authorities in the
Church.
I will endeavour to specify some particular
departments of life in which the Christian
moral law needs to be reapplied or at least
reasserted.
First, then, in regard to the indissolubleness
of the marriage tie. Here it is true we are
not without quite recent guidance. The last
i34 The Mission of the Church.
Pan-Anglican Conference, leaving open one
disputed point, laid down a certain number
of clear principles1. Here then something
still needs to be done in the way of enun-
ciating the law; and, when this is done, we
want every Churchman to understand clearly
what the Christian marriage law is, and that
it is the law for Christian men and women,
not merely as individuals in private life, but
as members of the Christian society, who are
bound to 'judge' their fellows in respect of
it so long as they are claiming to be members
of the Church of Christ2.
And, secondly, in regard to commercial
morality. That is a matter of much more
delicacy and difficulty. We know that a great
deal contrary to Christian honesty, contrary
to the laws of charity and brotherhood among
classes, goes on in the commercial world.
And as Christian teachers we are deterred
from speaking out on the subject not only by
fear of offending, but by a worthier motive —
the fear of speaking ignorantly on a matter
1 See app. note 16. 2 i Cor. v. 12, 13.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 135
on which ignorant invective is sure to do a
great deal of harm. We want then to or-
ganize on these matters all enlightened Chris-
tian opinion. The first step to this is to form
small consultative bodies of men who know
exactly what life means in workshops, in dif-
ferent business circles, among employers of
labour, among workmen ; they must be men
who combine a profound practical Christianity
with thorough knowledge of business ways.
Such men could supply really trustworthy in-
formation as to what is wrong in current
practice, and as to the sort of typical acts and
refusals to act in which genuine Christianity
would show itself. Such consultation on an
extensive and systematic scale is a necessary
preliminary to any adequate Christian casuistry,
and to the organization of a legitimate Christian
moral opinion.
Thirdly, we clearly need careful re-statement
for Christians of the responsibility of wealth.
Strong and solemn are St. Paul's words.
' Having food and raiment, let us be there-
with content. But they that will be rich fall
i36 The Mission of the Church.
into temptation and a snare, and into many
foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men
in destruction and perdition. For the love of
money is a root of all evil ; which while some
coveted after, they have erred from the faith,
and pierced themselves through with many
sorrows1/ One of the most distinguished of
living men I once heard say that luxury was
like the strings with which the Liliputians tied
Gulliver; each thread was weak in itself so
that any one could break it, but together they
held him fast more tightly than strong cords.
So with the little things of luxury ; they grow
upon people, the things we say we ' cannot do
without.' In their accumulation they tie society
down, and make us the slaves of innumerable
wants not really requisite for life, or health,
or happiness. We want to re-state the obliga-
tion of Christian simplicity. We want to press
upon Christians the conviction that wealth
is not a justification of selfish luxury, but a
solemn trust for the good of mankind. Be-
yond all question, whatever may be the func-
1 i Tim. vi. 8-10.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 137
tion of the State in regard to wealth, it is the
function of the Christian Church to emphasize
the responsibility which it involves upon the
consciences of its members more, very much
more, than has been done in the past.
Lastly, in regard to the position of women
in view of the modern movement for what is
called her emancipation. Obviously this is a
matter on which the Christian Church is bound
to have clear teaching, and to make it heard.
I believe that no society or system could put
women so high as Christianity puts them, or
could give so great a dignity to womanhood
as Christianity gives it. But Christianity dig-
nifies womanhood not by ignoring or confusing
the differences, physiological and moral, which
obtain between men and women; but by as-
signing them distinct spheres, in view of the
distinctive characteristics, which all experience at
least justifies us in attaching to the sexes.
What is the position of women in Holy
Scripture? There is the position of the wife,
that position at the head of the household which
is held up to our admiration in the memorable
138 The Mission of the Church.
panegyric upon the mistress of the household
in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs.
Is there any position in life more dignified?
Is there any priesthood higher than the minis-
try of the mother of the family? And then
there is that ministry of mercy, belonging in a
measure specially to unmarried women and
widows. These, St. Paul says, are in a
special sense free to consecrate themselves to
the service of Christ and His poor. This is
the second position for women that Holy
Scripture recognizes. It was the shame of
our society fifty years ago that it had so largely
taken away the dignity of unmarried life or
failed to recognize it. Besides the normal
positions of women, we must also recognize
exceptional cases :— there are in the New Testa-
ment prophetesses, like Philip's daughters. This
position, I suppose, corresponds more or less
to what we see in the case of a St. Catherine
or a St. Theresa, if not to the extraordinary
mission of a Joan of Arc. These are clearly
exceptional cases. The position of a public
preacher, or active politician, the Church would
The Mission of the Church in Society. 139
not, I suppose, normally recognize as appropriate
to women. The inclination to such positions she
would, I think, with the authority of the New
Testament behind her, keep under severe re-
straint, and would only allow of such missions
when there was an over-mastering sense of divine
vocation.
I do not want to go into details. My object
has been rather to quicken our consciousness
of the moral mission of the Church. But I
have endeavoured to specify four departments
in which we need to think out and re-state what
is the Christian moral law. The Church ought
to be giving clearer teaching than in fact she is
giving in regard to the law of marriage, in
regard to commercial morality, in regard to
the responsibility of wealth, in regard to the
position and true dignity of women.
In the past sixty years there has been a
great advance among us along what one may
call the lines of personal sanctification, and also
in developing special forms of religious self-
dedication. Wonderful, surely, has been the
development of the nursing profession, and of
MO The Mission of the Church.
sisterhoods, the revival of spiritual discipline, of
the ideal of the priesthood and of the evangelical
freedom of the celibate life. All this that God
has done among us gives us the greatest cause
for encouragement. What now seems to be
needed, is that we should pay special attention
to the sanctification of common social life1, laying
down in clear terms the moral law of Christianity
and pressing its fuller observance upon the con-
science of Churchmen. Thus the world will
understand that, as the Church has a distinct
creed and a distinct worship, so she has also
a distinctive moral law for social life, which is
to be her characteristic mark in all sorts of
societies and under all sorts of conditions.
V.
This moral law, unchanging as it is, we are
to seek to commend to the consciences of all
men, specially by finding its affinity to the
moral tendencies and aspirations of our own
time. We are to discern the signs of the
1 See in the Dublin Review, July, 1892, an article by
Dr. Barry on the life of Fr. Hecker, pp. 80 2.
The Mission of the Church in Society. MI
times, for good as for evil : always to keep
our eye on the unchanging law of Christ, and
also always on the changing wants and aspira-
tions of men round about us ; so shall we fill the
office of interpreters translating the ancient
precepts into current language, bringing forth
out of our treasures, like wise stewards, things
new and old, commending our message to
every man's conscience in the sight of God.
Why do we not discern the signs of the
times? If we look abroad and ask what is the
meaning of the current body of right social
aspiration in the world to-day, you find it
such as is not infrequently expressed in the
word socialism. Now socialism is generally
taken to imply a certain policy in regard to
the functions of the State, with which we need
not now concern ourselves. In the New
Testament the function assigned to the State,
is that of administering the divine law of justice
among men, and for the realization of this
function among ourselves a good deal still
remains for political reforms to accomplish.
Whether the Christian law, so far as it may
i42 The Mission of the Church.
be said to go beyond the law of justice, can
ever become the law of the State is another
question. But socialism expresses not only a
state policy but also a moral ideal. As a moral
ideal it is profoundly Christian, and I believe
that the great Christian principle of the brother-
hood of man as based upon the fatherhood
of God sums up all that is best in the social and
moral aspiration of our time, whether it does or
does not call itself Christian. In past ages we
have allowed Calvinism to rob the imagination
of Christians of that rich treasure, that master-
thought, of the fatherhood of God— His im-
partial, individual, disciplinary love for all men
whom He has created : also we have allowed
the love of luxury and power in privileged classes
to rob us of the corresponding truth of the
brotherhood of men — the capacity of all men
for brotherhood and the realization of that
capacity in the ' brotherhood ' of the Church.
The time has come to restore to men's minds
and hearts the full vivid power of these central
conceptions.
It is a department of this work of restoration,
The Mission of the Church in Society. 143
to bring back into general recognition the
originally representative and fraternal character
of the institutions of the Church. Thus the
Christian ministry, the Christian episcopate,
runs back behind the association with which
it has become encrusted in days of English
aristocracy and mediaeval feudalism. It runs
back to what one may call the constitutional
fraternity of the early Church. In the Church
of the Empire the episcopate, and indeed the
presbyterate also, had a representative character.
Real representative government may be said to
have had its origin in the Christian ministry.
These Church officers were indeed ordained
from above, in accordance with the principle of
apostolic succession ; but they were elected in
correspondence with the representative principle.
And patristic writers emphasized this repre-
sentative character of Church officers sometimes,
it seems, almost as much as the necessity
of due and proper ordination and succession1.
These are principles to which we cannot return
hurriedly, and their application at this particular
1 See The Church and the Ministry, pp. 97-107.
M4 The Mission of the Church.
moment is complicated by a dominant fallacy —
the identification of the Christian layman with
the English citizen. Now it is in every organ-
ization of men a fundamental principle that social
rights only correspond to social duties done.
Where people are not living by their Church
principles, and doing their duty as Churchmen,
they lose the rights and privileges of Church-
men. But when this misunderstanding has
been cleared away, and the layman is recognized
to be one fulfilling his Church obligations, the
principle of representation ought to be applied.
We do, then, need to watch and pray and labour
for the recovery of that more truly repre-
sentative character which did belong to Church
institutions in early times.
I have come to the end of that small portion
of a great task which it has been possible even to
attempt to accomplish in four lectures. I have
been speaking of the nature of the Church's
mission and of some of the tasks which lie before
her. Before we separate let me say a word of
the power in which we go forth to our duty.
The Mission of the Church in Society. 145
VI.
We believe that Christ, on whom our faith
and hope and love are fixed, is the master of all
ages and of all men. It is true of every great
man that he passes in a measure beyond the con-
ditions of a particular age, and gains a certain
universality; it is true in a unique sense of
Christ. He was very God. He took our
manhood into His divine personality. The
result is a character which is truly human, but
which has none of the limitations which narrow
human nature. He took those limitations which
belong necessarily to humanity — the limitations
which make possible the exercise of a really
human faith and virtue— not the limitations which
characterize an Englishman, or a Chinaman, or
a particular age, or sex, or class. Jesus Christ
is the catholic man ; His appeal is to all men of
all ages. His example is universal ; His teach-
ing is applicable to all time ; and the grace
which makes it possible for us really to corre-
spond to His appeal, to follow His example,
to accept His teaching, is nothing short of the
L
146 The Mission of the Church.
communication to us of His own unchanging
self, His own eternal and His human spirit. It is
the inward presence of Jesus Christ, the inward
relation in which we stand to Him, that makes
His example always, for the sons of faith,
practical and realizable. For Jesus who is
' passed into the heavens/ ' made higher than the
heavens/ is yet by the Spirit brought nearer
to us than ever He was to the Apostles on
earth ; the Spirit links the humanity of every
member of the Lord's body to Him as He
sits in glorified manhood at the right hand of
God. The Spirit's presence is the presence of
Jesus, as the presence of Jesus is the presence
of the Father, for the holy persons of the
Trinity are in inseparable unity. Thus the
Christ, God in manhood, is present in the Chris-
tian, in as true a sense of the word ' presence '
as that word can bear, by spiritual force and
reality. Christ in us is the hope of glory. And
He, whose example we have before our e}-es
in the pages of the Gospels is working inwardly
in our hearts, to purify us gradually and mould
us into His own incomparable likeness. This
The Mission of the Church in Society. 147
which is the source of our own encouragement
gives us also our hope for men. It is the great
privilege of the Christian to look behind all
discouragements on the surface of humanity,
to fasten upon its hidden capacity for God, and
to hope for every man who does not obstinately
and persistently refuse the divine offer. They
are few, we may hope, who thus finally refuse
God. We are willing rather to think of men
as weak and wandering, and to have hope for
them. We have ground of hope because we
know what the love of God for each soul
means, what is the infinite self-sacrifice of the
Son of God. And if there is any turning towards
God in the heart of a man, though it be tentative
and inchoate, we believe that there is eternity,
there is the world beyond the grave, for the
purpose of God to take full effect.
We shall lose heart and courage in our
ministry except so far as our mind is con-
stantly fixed upon Christ; both as giving us
our moral ideal for men and as supplying the
forces of recovery. With our eyes Tfixed upon
Christ, and upon eternity, we have justification
L 2
148 The Mission of the Church.
for believing beyond belief, and hoping beyond
hope for the souls of men ; and, in fact, our
power of recovering men depends on our
power of hoping for them and believing in
them. If you have ceased to believe in any
human soul you have, by that very fact, lost
all chance of helping it towards recovery.
Your power of recovering men depends on
your power of believing in them; and your
power of believing in them depends on the
constancy with which you contemplate the
mind of Christ towards them and the eternal
destiny which lies before them. It is not our
wealth, or position, or the historical dignity of
our Church which will save men. It is simply
the power of Christ. And, in fact, the real
spiritual power of the Church has not risen
and fallen with its secular position. There
is a famous answer attributed, I believe, to
St. Thomas Aquinas when, on the occasion of
some Papal Jubilee, the bags of gold were
being carried past into the treasury of Peter,
and the Pope said to him — ' Peter could not
say now, " Silver and gold have I none " ' :
The Mission of the Church in Society. 149
1 No, your Blessedness,' replied Thomas, ' Nor
can he say, "In the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth rise up and walk." '
It is in the strength of Jesus then truly
and literally that we are to go out comforting
others with the comfort wherewith we our-
selves are comforted of God *.
And, oh ! do not narrow that word ' comfort/
We are to minister to the broken-hearted,
the sick, the weary, the dying; we are to
comfort them in the ordinary sense of comfort,
with absolution, and solace, and peace. But
we have not only to do with the broken, the
feeble, the exhausted, but also with the young,
the high-spirited, the enthusiastic and energetic.
The mission of the Church applies just as
much to these as to those. It is as much
our privilege and our duty to put courage
and confidence, and a sense of service and
hope, into the hearts of the enthusiastic and
promising, as it is to console penitents, and
to bind up the broken-hearted. 'As a young
man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons
1 See app. note 17.
150 The Mission of the Church.
marry thee.' We must be inspired by the
spirit and meaning of the Church, so that
we can present her to men as something
that can enlist their hopes and energies, and
vitalize all their highest faculties. ' They that
seek the Lord shall renew their strength ;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary ; they shall
walk, and not faint.' We have a great work
before us ; a work for the doing of which
divine encouragements are given ; but it is a
work that needs all the best energies that
humanity has to offer.
APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 1, to p. 18.
The witness to the doctrine of the visible Church in
Clement and Ignatius. 'Clement,' says Prof. Pfleiderer
truly (Hibbert Lectures, p. 252), 'most characteris-
tically connected the new law of the Church with the
two models of the political and military organization
of the Roman state and the sacerdotal hierarchy of
the Jewish theocracy' (i.e. it was to his mind an
organized, and divinely organized, body) : but the
Professor is not justified in regarding this as in
opposition to St. Paul's teaching of justification.
See above pp. 68 ff. and The Church and the Ministry
(Longmans;, pp. 49 f., also on Clement, pp. 309 f.
316 f.
The witness of Clement is very explicit to the
Church in its general idea. The witness of Ignatius
is much more emphatic to the threefold ministry of
bishops, priests, and deacons. This he regards (i) as
i52 The Mission of the Church.
essential to the existence of a Church, (2) as based
on the ordinances of the Apostles, (3) as coextensive
with the Church. See Ch. and Mm., p. 300 f. This
testimony is quite compatible with that afforded by
the Didache and by Clement if it be recognized that
the superior apostolic, prophetic, or (in the later sense)
episcopal order was in some districts not localized
in particular Churches till a subsequent date : see
above pp. 29, 30, and Ch. and Mm., pp. 333 ff.
NOTE 2, to p. 22.
Archdeacon Sinclair, in his recent charge, The
Church, Invisible, Visible, Catholic, National (Eliot
Stock, 1892), appears to put the individual relation
of the soul to God first, to regard itas logically prior to,
and independent of, church-membership, and to make
the association of Christians into societies a sub-
sequent act. See p. 2. ' But just as believers having
this personal relation to their Lord would be in a
spiritual sense as the branches to the vine, as the
limbs to the head, so they would naturally form,
under the Divine guidance, a society among them-
selves in their relation to each other on earth.' May
I call attention on this subject to some words of the
present bishop of London in a noble sermon entitled
' Individualism and Catholicism.' See Twelve Sermons
preached at the consecration of Truro Cathedral
(Wells, Gardner & Masters, 1888), pp. 17-20.
Appended Notes. 153
'We are sometimes asked to think that the
Church only exists in the union of believers, and has
no reality of its own. Now, it is perfectly clear that
in the New Testament the idea of the Church is not
that. Men talk sometimes as if a church could be
constituted simply by Christians coming together and
uniting themselves into one body for the purpose.
Men speak as if Christians came first, and the
Church after ; as if the origin of the Church was in
the wills of individual Christians who composed it.
But, on the contrary, throughout the teaching of the
Apostles we see that it is the Church that comes first
and the members of it afterwards. Men were not
brought to Christ and then determined that they
would live in a community. Men were not brought
to Christ to believe in Him and his Cross, and to
recognize the duty of worshipping the Heavenly
Father in His name, and then decided that it would
be a great help to their religion that they should join
one another in that worship, and should be united
in the bonds of fellowship for that purpose. In the
New Testament, on the contrary, the Kingdom of
Heaven is already in existence, and men are invited
into it. The Church takes its origin, not in the will
of man, but in the will of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He sent forth His Apostles; the Apostles received
their commission from Him ; they were not organs of
the congregation ; they were ministers of the Lord
Himself. He sent them forth to gather all the thou-
154 The Mission of the Church.
sands that they could reach within His fold ; but
they came first, and the members came afterwards ;
and the Church in all its dignity and glory was quite
independent of the members that were brought
within it. Everywhere men are called in ; they do
not come in, and make the Church by coming. They
are called in to that which already exists ; they are
recognized as members when they are within ; but
their membership depends upon their admission,
and not upon their constituting themselves into a
body in the sight of the Lord
'This individualism of which I speak has too
much truth in it to fail in strength. It cannot be
counter-balanced by anything but insisting on what
the Church of the New Testament really is ; making
men everywhere understand that the Church is a
body which lives from age to age : adapting itself to
all times and all circumstances : finding spiritual life
for all characters ; supplying the means of grace for
every variety in humanity. It is for this that we
insist upon the succession of the ministry, because
we find the Church from the very beginning flowing
out of the ministry. He distorts that conception of
the ministry who ever allows it to be the means of
separating clergy from laity, and making men think
that the great body consists of the clergy only, or
that the clergy only are the life of the body. The
purpose of that succession is to link the Church of
the present from generation to generation, back, by
Appended Notes. 155
steps that cannot be mistaken, to the first appoint-
ment of the Apostles by the Lord. The purpose of
that succession is to make men feel the unity of the
body as it comes down the stream of history, and, if
possible, to touch their hearts with some sense of
that power which the Lord bequeathed when He
ascended up on high and gave gifts to men ; with
some sense of that grace which He promised when
He said that He would be with us always, even to
the end of the world ; some sense of that undying
life which shall still, until He comes again, unite
those who love Him with Himself, and spread the
knowledge of His name throughout the human race.
To this persistence of the Church as a living body a
Cathedral ever bears a silent but visible witness ; the
seat of Bishop after Bishop, not ruling in his own
name ; not by virtue of his own abilities ; not giving
to posterity the narrow legacy of his own opinions
nor institutions that shall for ever represent himself,
but each in succession handing on the life and power
of the Church of Christ.'
Archdeacon Sinclair makes much of the ' invisible '
and 'ideal5 Church, of which we are constituted
members by faith. No doubt this idea took
powerful hold of the minds of the Reformers and of
later Protestants ; yet as the Lutheran Rothe
pointed out (see Ch. and Mm., p. 19) it does not
represent the thought of the early Church, nor does
it that of the New Testament. It is true (i) that
156 The Mission of the Church.
part of the Church, i. e. that in Paradise, is invisible
to us : and (2) that many conscientious good men
are not members of the Church now, who yet
will, we trust, become members of the Church in
Paradise. Also (3) that all baptized persons are as
such members of the one Church on earth, even
though they are living in very broken relation to it.
Also (4) that the Church does not represent the whole
sphere of the divine action, and is not therefore
simply identical with the kingdom of God. But the
Church so far as it is on earth, means nothing else
than the visible organized body of baptized persons,
worthy or unworthy. The word ' Church ' throughout
the New Testament stands for the same thing, and
not at one time for a visible society, at another for
an ideal or invisible relation.
NOTE 3, to p. 24.
Necessity of sacraments not absolute. See St. Thorn.
Aq. P. iii. Q. 68. Art. 2. ' Deus .... cuius potentia
sacramentis visibilibus non alligatur, cf. S. Aug.
Quaeslt. in Levit. 84. Proinde colligitur invisibilem
sanctificationem quibusdam affuisse et profuisse sine
visibilibus sacramentis . . nee tamen ideo sacramentum
visibile contemnendum est : nam contemptor eius
invisibiliter sanctificari nullo modopotest.5 See also
Andrewes in Libr. of Angl. Calh. Theol., Sermons
vol. v. p. 92 ' Gratia Dei non alligatur mediis. '
Appended Notes. 157
NOTE 4, TO p. 28.
Irenaeus on the elements of the Christian religion.
The language of Irenaeus, the great representative
in the second century of the principle of apostolic tra-
dition, is very striking. C. Haer, iy. 33,8. 'The true
knowledge (the Christian religion) is the doctrine
of the Apostles and the ancient system of the Church
in all the world ; and the character of the body
of Christ according to the successions of the bishops
to whom they (the Apostles) delivered the Church
in each separate place ; the complete use moreover
of the Scripture which has come down to our time,
preserved without corruption, receiving neither addi-
tion nor loss ; its public reading without falsification ;
legitimate and careful exposition according to the
scriptures, without peril and without blasphemy ; and
the pre-eminent gift of love.'
NOTE 5, to p. 43.
The contents of the New Testament 'tradition.'
We should gather from the New Testament that the
original 'catechetical teaching' contained (a) instruc-
tion in the facts of our Lord's life, death, resurrection,
&c., cf. Luke i. 1-4 ; i Cor. xi. 23, xv. 3-4. (b) in-
struction in the meaning of sacred rites, baptism,
laying on of hands, eucharist, Heb. vi. 1-6; cf.
Rom. vi. 3 ; i Cor x. 15-16, xi. 23 ff. ; cf. Acts
ii. 38. This would have included the learning of
158 The Mission of the Church.
the Lord's Prayer, see Didache, 8. (c) Instruc-
tion in the moral obligations of ' the way ' and in
the 'last things' Heb. vi. 1-2; i Thess. iv. 1-2,
v. 2. We must add to this, what I think almost all
New Testament writings would imply, (d) instruction
in the meaning ctf ' the Name ' — the Name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (The Judaic,
semi-Christian, character of the instruction in the
Didache, whether moral, doctrinal, or sacramental,
see the Ch. andtheMin., pp. 411 f., makes its emphatic
witness to the Threefold Name (see c. 7) the more
important). In all cases the references I have given
above are not references to the teaching of the New
Testament books, but the teaching which those books
imply to have been already given.
NOTE 6, to p. 51.
The Anglican doctrine of the sacraments. Nothing
surely can be richer or better than Hooker's teaching
on the sacraments in principle. E. P. v. 50, 56 ff.
If all parties could agree on what he teaches positively,
it would be well for the Church of England. And it
is not to be forgotten how strongly, and surely rightly,
Hooker, with the older Catholic writers, insists,
against some more recent schoolmen, that God is
the direct agent in the bestowal of grace on the
occasion of each sacrament — 'solum Deum producere
gratiam ad praesentiam sacramentorum.' E. P. vi. 6
10-11.
Appended Notes. 159
NOTE 7, to p. 52.
The Anglican requirement of the apostolic succession.
On this subject let me refer to the careful language of
Prof. Stanton, The Place of Authority in Religious
Belief (Longmans, i89i\ pp. 204 ff., and 225 ff. See
also the Catena of Anglican Divines in Tracts for the
Times, No. 74. One may recognize that as a fact the
Anglican divines of the seventeenth century admitted
exceptions to the necessity of episcopal ordination
without either thinking their teaching on this head
seriously dangerous, or on the other hand regarding it
as quite adequate to ancient standards. Archdeacon
Sinclair does not, to my mind (1. c. pp. 55 if.), use
these Anglican divines quite fairly. To mention two
points: they are speaking of Protestants who 'want
an ordinary succession without their own fault, out of
invincible ignorance or necessity,' or 'where bishops
could not be had.' Now these qualifications greatly
limit the application of their words. Secondly, they
show no tenderness at all to schismatics in their own
country. If I were a Nonconformist I would sooner
be dealt with by a modern High Churchman than by
a Caroline divine, though the modern High Church-
man taught by experience has returned to the simpler
ancient doctrine of the apostolic succession as neces-
sary not indeed to the salvation of an individual, but
to the constitution of a Church.
1 60 The Mission of the Church.
NOTE 8, to p. 56.
The meaning of the word 'spiritual.' Cf. Milligan,
Resurrection of our Lord (Macmillan, ist ed.i note
15, p. 247 : ' An element of confusion is introduced
into all our thoughts upon this subject by the
ambiguity of such words as "spirit " and " spiritual."
We are apt to think of them as antithetical to " body "
and "bodily." How far this is from the view of the
New Testament the single passage i Cor. xv. 44 is
sufficient to prove. The antithesis of scripture is not
of the spiritual and the bodily, but that of the spiritual
and the carnal.'
This passage is perhaps too strongly expressed.
Thus 'spirit' as applied to God, carries with it
(e. g. St. John iv. 24) associations of immateriality ;
again, the ' spirit ' of man is opposed to his ' body '
i Cor. v. 3, i Thess. v. 23. But the glorified Christ
in His risen body is also called simply 'spirit'
i Cor. xv. 45, and the adjective 'spiritual' (i Cor.
x. 3, xv. 44) or the phrase ' according to the spirit '
(Gal. iv. 29) carries with it no sort of opposition to
materiality : that is spiritual which is according to
the law of the spirit, or the expression of spirit.
NOTE 9, to p. 63.
Gnostic esotericism and Christian universality. On
this subject see Lightfoot's note on Col. i. 28 ; and
Neander's Ch. Hist. (Bohn's trans.), ii. pp. 33 34.
Appended Notes. 161
The effect of the Gnostic controversy on the sacra-
mental and ecclesiastical teaching of Christianity
appears most clearly in Ignatius' letters, Irenaeus
B. iii. 1-4, iv. 17-18, v. 2-3. Tertullian, De Res.
Cam. 8 and De Praescr.
NOTE 1 0, to p. 65.
Tertullian on the simplicity of Christian sacraments.
See De Bapt. 2. ' Nihil adeo est, quod tam obduret
mentes hominum, quam simplicitas divinorum operum
quae in actu videtur et magnificentia quae in effectu
repromittitur : ut hie quoque quoniam tanta simplici-
tate sine pompa, sine apparatu novo aliquo, denique
sine sumptu homo in aqua demissus et inter pauca
verba tinctus non multo vel nihilo mundior resurgit,
eo incredibilis existimetur consecutio aeternitatis.
Mentior, si non e contrario idolorum sollemnia vel
arcana de suggestu et apparatu deque sumptu fidem et
auctoritatem sibi exstruunt. Pro misera incredulitas,
quae denegas Deo proprietates suas, simplicitatem
et potestatem.'
NOTE 11, top. 68.
Goethe on the sacramental system. There is a very
remarkable passage in Goethe's Autobiography (Dich-
tungund Wahrheit, see Bohn's Trans., vol. i. p. 245-
248), where, complaining of the paucity of Protestant
sacraments, he writes : ' In moral and religious, as
well as in physical and civil matters, a man does not
M
1 62 The Mission of the Church.
like to do anything on the spur of the moment ; he
needs a sequence such as results in habit ; what
he is to love and perform, he cannot represent to
himself as single or isolated, and if he is to repeat
anything willingly, it must not have become strange
to him. As the Protestant worship lacks fulness in
general, so, if it be investigated in detail, it will be
found that the Protestant has too few sacraments,
nay, indeed, he has only one in which he is himself
an actor — the Lord's Supper : for baptism he sees
only when it is performed on others, and is not
greatly edified by it. The sacraments are the highest
part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an ex-
traordinary divine favour and grace. In the Lord's
Supper earthly lips are to receive a divine Being
embodied, and partake of an heavenly under the form
of an earthly nourishment. This idea is just the
same in all Christian churches; whether the sacra-
ment is taken with more or less submission to the
mystery, with more or less accommodation to what is
intelligible; it always remains a great and holy action,
which in reality takes the place of the possible or im-
possible, the place of that which man can neither
attain nor do without. But such a sacrament should
not stand alone ; no Christian can partake of it with
the true joy for which it is given, if the symbolical or
sacramental sense is not fostered within him. He
must be accustomed to regard the inner religion of
the heart and that of the external church as perfectly
Appended Notes. 163
one ; as the great universal sacrament, which again
divides itself into so many others, and communicates
to these parts its holiness, indestructibleness, and
eternity.'
This is followed by a wonderfully appreciative ac-
count of the sequence of sacraments, adapted to all
stages of human life, in the Catholic Church.
NOTE 12, to p. 71.
Christians have no need to ask for the Spirit. See
Moule, Veni Creator (Hodder & Stoughton, 1890),
pp. 222-3. The Christian Church has in fact habit-
ually invoked the Holy Spirit — 'Veni, Creator
Spiritus' 'Veni, sancte Spiritus' — and such language
has a clear meaning in view of the fact that what
God has given He is still perpetually giving. But the
fact about the New Testament language is as stated
in the text. See Rom. viii. 9, 15, 16 ; Gal. v. 25 ;
Eph. iv. 30; i Thess. v. 19; Heb. vi. 4; i John iii.
24 ; cf. i Tim. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. i. 6.
NOTE 13, to p. 73.
Infants who are proper subjects of baptism. It is
the general teaching of the Church that the children
of non-Christian parents, are not, till they come to
years of discretion, fit subjects of baptism, unless
their parents give them to the Church. See St.
Thorn. Aq. Sumina Theol. P. iii. Q. 68. Art. 10.
M 2
1 64 The Mission of the Church.
(This decision he bases on the fact that they have
not yet in themselves the exercise of will ; that
it is against the will, and so against the natural right
of the parent: that it generates scandal through
relapses.) On the other hand, the Church since
St. Paul, regards the children ot a Christian parent,
as fit subjects for baptism. See i Cor. vii. 14. The
children are ' holy,' i. e., as Tertullian interprets,
'designati sanctitati ac per hoc etiam saluti' (DeAn.
29). The reason is that the faith of the parent offers
the child for baptism, and truly represents it. Thus
the 68th canon (of 1603) decrees the penalty of
suspension for three months upon any minister who
refuses to christen according to the form of the Book
of Common Prayer any child that is brought to him
upon Sundays or Holydays to be christened. Besides
the faith of the parents a guarantee is also provided
in the faith of the sponsors who represent the Church.
'Children,' sa3rs St. Augustine, 'are presented to
receive spiritual grace not so much by those who bear
them in their arms — though by them too if they are
also good Christians — as by the whole society of the
faithful ' (Ep. 98. 5).
The principle in all this is that faith is to be required
when baptism is to be administered; either the faith
of the person to be baptized or, in the case of a child,
of those who undertake for him, his parents or the
Church. This representative faith, which guaran-
tees the Christian education of children, is plainly
Appended Notes. 165
demanded by our baptismal office, as a condition of
baptism. We violate then a fundamental principle,
and degrade a sacrament to the level of a charm, if
we get children to be baptized indiscriminately, i. e.
without reference to their Christian bringing up. It
must be wrong to put undue pressure upon parents
to have their children baptized where it is even
reasonably certain that they will not either act to-
wards them, or allow the Church to act, as Christian
parents should. Some initiative on the part of the
parents, or some guarantee on behalf of the Church,
ought to be asked for : see, on the general subject,
Maskell, Holy Baptism (Pickering, 1848), pp. 336-
348.
•
NOTE 14, to p. 93.
Science cannot proceed without assumptions. See
Herbert Spencer, First Principles (Williams &
Norgate, 5th ed. 1887), pp. 137 f. ' In what way, then,
must philosophy set out ? The developed intelligence
is framed upon certain organized and consolidated
conceptions of which it cannot divest itself: and
which it can no more stir without using than the
body can stir without help of its limbs. In what
way, then, is it possible for intelligence, striving
after Philosophy, to give any account of these
conceptions, and to show either their validity or
their invalidity ? There is but one way : those of
them which are vital, or cannot be severed from the
MS
1 66 The Mission of the Church.
rest without vital dissolution, must be assumed as
true provisionally. The fundamental intuitions that
are necessary to the process of thinking, must be
temporarily accepted as unquestionable : leaving the
assumption of their unquestionableness to be justi-
fied by the results. How is it to be justified by
the results ? As any other assumption is justified —
by ascertaining that all the conclusions deducible
from it, correspond with the facts as directly observed
— by showing the agreement between the experiences
it leads us to anticipate and the actual experiences.
There is no method of establishing the validity of any
belief, except that of showing its entire congruity with all
other beliefs'
I Have italicized the last sentence, and would
compare with it an admirable passage on the relation
of philosophy to ordinary assumptions, scientific and
religious, in E. Caird'sPht'/osophy of Kant (hlaclehose,
Glasgow, 1877) pp. 34-5. The line of thought may
be pursued in Holland's Logic and Life (Long-
mans) Sermons i-iii, and in Newman's Univ.
Sermons, 'Implicit and Explicit Reason.'
NOTE 15, to p. 100.
Evolution and its relation to Religious Thought. See
an excellent work, with this title, by the distin-
guished American man of science, Prof. Leconte
(Chapman & Hall). The first two parts of the
Appended Notes. 167
book are occupied with the statement of the theory
of evolution and of the evidence on which it rests.
The third part considers the relation of the theory
to Theism in general and Christianity in particular.
(From the theological point of view Prof. Leconte's
remarks upon the theory of moral evil are surely
inadequate, ed. 2. pp. 369 ff.)
NOTE 16, to p. 134.
The resolutions of the Conference of Bishops of the
Anglican Communion (July 1888) in regard to Divorce.
See Encyclical Letter with Resolutions and Reports
(S. P. C. K. 1888) Resol. 4.
'(i) That inasmuch as our Lord's words expressly
forbid divorce, except in the case of fornication or
adultery, the Christian Church cannot recognize
divorce in any other than the excepted case, or
give any sanction to the marriage of any person who
has been divorced contrary to this law, during the
life of the other party.
'(2) That under no circumstances ought the guilty
party in the case of a divorce for adultery, to be
regarded, during the life-time of the innocent party,
as a fit recipient of the blessing of the Church on
marriage.
' (3) That recognizing that there always has been
a difference of opinion in the Church on the question
whether our Lord meant to forbid marriage to the
1 68 The Mission of the Church.
innocent party in a divorce for adultery, the con-
ference recommends that the clergy should not be
instructed to refuse the sacraments or other privileges
of the Church to those who, under civil sanctions,
are thus married.
' (4) That whereas doubt has been entertained
whether our Lord meant to permit such marriage to
the innocent party, the Conference are unwilling to
suggest any precise instruction in the matter.' The
Bishop of the diocese is to decide 'whether clergy
would be justified in refraining from pronouncing
the blessing of the Church on such unions.'
These Pan- Anglican Conferences are not legiti-
mate synods, provincial or general, and the language
of this resolution implies the recognition of this fact.
But the resolutions represent fairly the present
mind of Anglican bishops, given with a due sense of
spiritual responsibility. For 'the difference of opinion
which there has always been in the Church ' on
the respect of the re-marriage of the innocent party,
reference may be made to the Library of the Fathers.
Tertullian, Note O. pp. 431 f.
It is interesting to note that Dr. Liddon, in a
letter to the Guardian of Sept. 19, 1888, recording
Dr. Dollinger's general satisfaction at the results of
the Pan- Anglican Conference writes : ' To advert to
a point which has caused some anxiety — the Con-
ference was, as he believed, right in recommending
that the clergy should not be instructed to refuse the
Appended Notes. 169
sacraments to the innocent party who remarried
after a divorce for adultery. He still had no doubt
that rropvfia in St. Matt. v. 32 and xix. 9 could not
mean juot^e/a but must refer to something that had
taken place before the marriage contract. The
decision of the Conference was, however, justified
by the history of opinion in the Church, about
which he had more to say than could be compressed
into a letter.'
But the Anglican loyth Canon of 1603, with the
Western Church as a whole, takes the stricter line of
forbidding the re-marriage of either party in a divorce
and separation ' a thoro et mensa ' during each other's
life. This line is undoubtedly more logical, but there
does not seem to be adequate authority for enforcing it.
NOTE 17, to p. 149.
Christ our example and our inward life. The Roman
Collect for the Octave of the Epiphany expresses this
thought very beautifully : — ' Deus cuius unigenitus
in substantia nostrae carnis apparuit, praesta, quae-
sumus, ut per cum, quern similem nobis foris agno-
vimus, intus reformari mereamur : qui tecum vivit.'
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